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Newly elected Somalia President Mohamud unharmed in apparent assassination attempt
Newly elected Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. PHOTO/File
Somalia’s president survived an assassination bid Wednesday, just two days into his new job, when bomb blasts claimed by Al-Qaida allied Al-Shabaab rebels rocked the Mogadishu hotel where he was meeting Kenya’s foreign minister.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was unharmed after two blasts went off outside the hotel where he had been staying in central Mogadishu, but three soldiers were killed in what appeared to be an attack by multiple suicide bombers.
“There has been a blast around the hotel where the president was. The president is safe. All the people who were inside the hotel are safe,” Ali Houmed, spokesman for the African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) told AFP.
A police officer said a Ugandan soldier from the African Union force and two Somali troops were killed in the attack, adding that initial reports suggested it was carried out by three suicide bombers.
An AFP reporter at the scene saw bits of flesh scattered in front of the hotel gates.
Mohamud, whose election on Monday was widely welcomed as a boost to the Horn of Africa country’s peace prospects, was meeting Kenyan Foreign Minister Sam Ongeri at the time of the explosions, a ministry source in Nairobi said.
The Al-Shabaab group which has been waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia’s government for five years, was quick to claim responsibility for the attack.
