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Thursday,
June 18, 2009
By Abdi Guled
MOGADISHU, June 18 (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber targeted Somalia's
security minister in his hotel in the central town of Baladwayne on
Thursday, witnesses said.
A ministry official in Baladwayne said Security Minister Omar Hashi Aden
had survived the strike. However, officials in the regional
administration said Aden may have been hit.
Mohamed Abdi, a shopkeeper near the hotel, said smoke was rising from
the building, government forces started shooting after the blast and
body parts were scattered in the street.
Aden moved to Baladwayne at the start of June with heavily-armed troops
in a bid to recapture more territory from hardline Islamist insurgents
outside Mogadishu.
Islamist group al Shabaab, which Washington says has links to al Qaeda
and has hundreds of foreign fighters in its ranks, has been spearheading
attacks on government forces.
A senior al Shabaab official said after a deadly suicide car bomb attack
on a police headquarters in the capital on May 25 that there would be
more suicide strikes in the coming days. (Editing by David Clarke and
Jon Boyle) (Email: nairobi.newsroom@reuters.com; tel: +254 20 2224717)
Source: Reuters, June 18, 2009
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