Hiiraan Online
Monday July 27, 2015
MOGADISHU (HOL) ----Somalia’s government has identified the suspect who carried out a truck suicide bombing on an upscale hotel in the Somali capital that killed at least 20 people on Sunday as a naturalized Somali-German.
Sources close to the security agencies confirmed to HOL that the bomber who carried out the massive attack on Jazeera hotel was identified after foreign forensic teams sifted through the wreckage of the car bomb and pieced together the attacker’s limbs.
The suspect who has not been named has carried out the most devastating truck bombing which is a new phenomenon for the horn of Africa nation which faces a deadly insurgency by the Al-Qaeda linked Alshabab group which has claimed the responsibility for the attack.
The powerful car bomb has inflicted huge damage on the hotel, turning parts hotel into rubble.The attack by the suspect who’s parts of the country’s diaspora has raised security alarm across Somalia. Security officials noted that most of the latest suicide attacks have been carried out by Somali teenagers who returned from Europe and America.
In May this year, Lul Dahir, a Somali-dutch has carried out a deadly suicide attack at the Central hotel in Mogadishu, killing at least 40 people.
A Somali-Swiss suicide car bomber detonated explosives-laden vehicle at the SYL hotel and killed at least 15 people.
“They come back to kill the already poor people in Somalia – why don’t they stay in Europe and collect the little welfare.” said Ali Dahir, a Mogadishu resident.
Western intelligences estimate that that Al-Shabaab has attracted around 1,000 recruits from the diaspora and several hundred foreigners.
A new multi-pronged offensive led by the African Union forces have been launched on early July to kick militants out of the towns and village still under their control, a scenario security officials believe could stem militants’ attacks.
However, security analysts warned that it would take years to neutralize the security threats by the Al-Shabab which wages a guerilla attack across Somalia. The group has also carried out several deadly attacks in the neighboring Kenya.