http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-24/ethiopian-compound-attacked-by-suicide-bomber-inside-somalia.html
Ethiopian Compound Attacked by Suicide Bomber Inside Somalia
January 24, 2012, 7:04 AM EST
By Hamsa Omar
(Updates with al-Shabaab claiming 33 soldiers killed in first paragraph.)
Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- A suicide bomber detonated a minibus full of
explosives outside a compound in southwestern Somalia that houses Ethiopian
troops, an official said. Al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked militia, claimed
responsibility for the attack and said 33 Ethiopian soldiers were killed.
“An Ethiopian soldier fired on the minibus before it entered the compound
and the attacker exploded himself at the front gate,” Sheikh Ahmed
Abdullahi, an official from the pro- Somali-government Ahlu Sunna Wal
Jama’a militia, said in a mobile-phone interview today from Beledweyne,
near the Ethiopian border. “No casualties were reported.”
Ethiopian soldiers entered Somalia last month to help government forces
capture Beledweyne from al-Shabaab, which controls most of southern and
central Somalia. Their incursion began after Kenya sent armed forces into
the neighboring country in mid-October to pursue al-Shabaab and secure its
borders.
Al-Shabaab said that among the Ethiopian troops killed were four “senior”
commanders, according to an e-mailed statement from the group. Ethiopian
Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti didn’t answer his mobile phone when
called today, while Communications Minister Bereket Simon’s mobile phone
was switched off when Bloomberg tried to reach him for comment.
“The Beledweyne operation is part of the new strategy adopted by the
mujahedeen as a bold response to the increasingly hostile enemies that have
invaded Somalia,” al-Shabaab said. As many as 72 soldiers were injured,
while two army trucks and a car parked in the compound were destroyed, it
said.
Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia is its second since 2006. Its forces
withdrew in January 2009 after pushing the Islamic Courts Union out of
Mogadishu, and later becoming bogged down in a guerrilla war with Islamic
militants.
--With assistance from William Davison in Addis Ababa. Editors: Paul
Richardson, Alastair Reed.
To contact the reporter on this story: Hamsa Omar in Mogadishu via Nairobi
at pmrichardson_at_bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at
pmrichardson_at_bloomberg.net.
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Received on Tue Jan 24 2012 - 11:29:40 EST
