Somali general, 7 bodyguards killed in auto bomb attack

A Somali general and at least seven of his bodyguards were killed on Sunday when their vehicle was rammed by a auto bomb driven by an al Shabaab suicide attacker in the capital, police and the Islamist group said.

The general killed in the attack, Military General Mohamed Roble Jimale, was known by the name Goobaanle.

Al-Shabaab said it captured the town and claimed to have killed senior government officials and recovered vehicles and weapons.

Gobale was the commander of the army’s Third Brigade.

Abdiaziz Mohamed, a security official, said, “There was a heavy blast caused by a vehicle loaded with explosives alongside the industrial road”.

“The blast was very huge, I saw smoke and fire overshadowing the whole area”, witness Abdi Hassan told AFP, saying he understood that Gobale had died in the attack.

Heavily-armed al-Shabaab fighters seized control of a Somali town near the Kenyan border on Friday after an attack on an army base that left several soldiers dead, local officials and residents said.

Sunday’s attack is the latest by militants in the Somali capital.

Al-Shabab was pushed out of Mogadishu by African Union peacekeeping forces in 2011 but has remained a potent antagonist in Somalia, launching frequent attacks aimed at overthrowing the Western-backed government.