The international community has condemned the killing of Somalia's security minister in a suicide car bombing Thursday and reiterated its support for the fragile government in Mogadishu. Somalia's al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab group has claimed responsibility for the attack amid separate reports that the militant group may also be preparing to attack neighboring Kenya.
A joint
statement issued by the United Nations, European Union, African Union,
the East African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, and the
League of Arab States strongly condemned Thursday's bombing, which
killed Somalia's Security Minister Omar Hashi Aden, a former Somali
ambassador to Ethiopia, and at least 40 others at a hotel in Beletweyne
near the Ethiopian border.
The statement described the suicide
bombing as "deplorable" and "cowardly," adding that extremists in
Somalia are not only a threat to Somalia, but to the region and the
world. The signatories offered their condolences and repeated their
pledge to fully support the shaky five month-old government of moderate
Islamist leader President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
The
bombing in Beledweyne is the latest of about a dozen Iraq-style suicide
attacks in Somalia since 2006. The first bombing occurred shortly
before Ethiopia, with U.S. support, sent troops to Somalia to oust the
Islamic Courts Union from power. Since then, suicide bombers have
targeted government officials, Ethiopian and Somali forces, and Ugandan
and Burundian troops deployed in the capital Mogadishu as part of a
4,300-member African Union peacekeeping mission.
As an
Islamist opposition leader in Eritrea where he was based after the
Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, President Ahmed rarely spoke out
against such attacks. But last year, the cleric and his supporters
broke ranks and signed a peace agreement with the country's
Ethiopia-backed secular government.
After his election in
January as president of an expanded transitional government, President
Ahmed tried to reconcile with the opposition and made moves to install
Islamic law in Somalia. But al-Shabab and other militant groups
rejected the peace overtures and intensified their efforts to overthrow
the government.
On Thursday, the Somali leader told reporters
in Mogadishu that al-Qaida, through its allies in Somalia and an
increasing number of foreign fighters, is attacking the country. He
says the government has no choice but to respond to the threat.
President Ahmed says Somalia is being attacked by terrorist groups, who do not want to see Somalis united and living in peace.
Somalia's
slain security minister was a former commander of the Islamic Courts
Union, whose forces fought with al-Shabab against Ethiopian troops in
Somalia. According to VOA sources in Somalia, the reason why al-Shabab
may have targeted Omar Hashi Aden is because he recently went to
Beledweyne with a militia unit, which had reportedly received training
in Ethiopia.
Al-Shabab, along with an allied militant
nationalist group called Hisbul Islam, accuses the Somali government of
cooperating with Ethiopia and allowing Ethiopian troops to re-establish
bases inside Somalia.
Fresh tensions are also rising in
neighboring Kenya. On Thursday, Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper
reported that an al-Shabab official in the southern Somali town of
Kismayo threatened to attack Kenya unless the east African nation
withdrew its military force from their common border.
The
newspaper says Kenyan troops at the border have intercepted illegal
goods from Somalia, which the government believes are being sold here
to raise money for al-Shabab. The report says the government in
Nairobi also fears that weapons are being smuggled into Kenya from
Somalia in such shipments.
