• Suicide bombers target pleasure-seekers on Mogadishu beach

    Feisal Omar / Reuters

    Somali soldiers inspect the scene of an explosion at a restaurant on Mogadishu's beachfront Friday.

    By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News

    A beach-front restaurant in Somali capital Mogadishu was hit by a twin suicide bomber attack Friday, an official and a witness said.

    The attack took place near the famous Lido beach, which is often crowded with people from the war-ravaged city playing soccer, swimming and simply having fun.

    “There was a big explosion from a car, then as people rushed towards the area after the blast, a suicide bomber with a vest exploded himself,” Mohammed Abdullahi, a businessman who was inside the restaurant when the attack took place, told the AFP news agency.

    Abdiqadir Mohamed, a senior police officer, gave a similar account of the attack to Reuters.

    Abdullahi told AFP that he saw two dead security guards and at least nine other people who were wounded. Reuters said one person was killed along with the two bombers. It was not immediately possible to confirm how many people died.

    There was no immediate claim of responsibility, Reuters said, but it added that the al-Shabaab rebel group had vowed a campaign of guerrilla-style attacks against the new government, which is supported by Western powers and regional states.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

    Related:

    Fun in Mogadishu? Yes, it happens

  • Masked 'goons' kill at least 17 in attacks on churches in Kenya

    Masked attackers killed at least 17 people on Sunday in gun and grenade attacks on churches in a Kenyan town used as a base for operations against al-Qaida-linked insurgents in Somalia.

    At least 45 people were wounded in the simultaneous attacks on Garissa, in the north of the East African country which has suffered a series of blasts since sending troops into Somalia last October to crush Somalia's al Shabaab militants.

    "We have 17 bodies at the mortuary so far," regional medical officer Abdikadir Sheikh told Reuters.

    There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

    Police said they suspected the attacks could have been the work of al-Shabab sympathizers or bandits, but it was too early to say. Inside Somalia, al Shabaab declined comment.

    "The goons were clad in balaclavas," regional deputy police chief Philip Ndolo told Reuters from Garissa.

    He said a total of seven attackers hurled grenades inside the Catholic Church and the African Inland Church and then opened fire with guns. They struck the churches, which are two miles apart, at around 10.15 a.m. local time (03:15 a.m. ET).

    Two policemen were among the dead.

    They were the latest attacks on Christian worshippers in Kenya after two people were killed in grenade blasts in March and April.

    But Sunday's coordinated attacks on churches resembled the tactics of Nigeria's Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which has killed hundreds of people on the other side of the continent.

    Other blasts in Kenya have hit nightclubs and bus stations in the capital Nairobi, the coastal city of Mombasa and areas near the Somalia border.

    Kenya's border region has been tense since it sent troops into Somalia to pursue al-Shabab Islamic militants, the BBC reported.

    Although a majority of Kenyans are Christian, Garissa is more heavily Muslim.

    The town of around 150,000, a market centre for the trade in camels, donkeys, goats and cattle, is largely populated by ethnic Somalis.

    "You can imagine for such a small town how the police and medical services have been stretched trying to deal with this," the police's Ndolo said.

    Garissa is about 60 miles from Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp, where gunmen kidnapped four aid workers and killed a driver on Friday before fleeing towards the border with Somalia.

    Last Sunday, three people were killed in a grenade attack at a night club in the port city of Mombasa, a day after the U.S. Embassy in Kenya warned of an imminent attack on the city. 

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  • African Union forces intensify attack on al Shabaab rebels in Somalia

    Stuart Price / African Union-United Nations Support Team via Reuters

    A tank with the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) advances as a battle group prepares to cross an area of bushland in the west of Deynile, north-west of the Somali capital Mogadishu on May 23, 2012.

    Stuart Price / African Union-United Nations Support Team via EPA

    Ugandan soldiers serving with AMISOM walk through a thicket on May 23, 2012 as a battle group crosses bushland west of Deynile.

    Reuters reports — African Union and Somali government troops stepped up their assault on al Shabaab militants in the northern outskirts of Mogadishu on Wednesday, forcing hundreds of families to flee their makeshift homes and head for the city center.

    The AU force, which already controls most of the capital, is trying to advance through the Afgoye corridor, once a rural area northwest of Mogadishu but now home to hundreds of thousands of Somalis uprooted from their homes.

    Al Shabaab still controls swathes of central and southern Somalia but is being gradually squeezed out of its strongholds by Kenyan and Ethiopian troops who have launched their own incursions into Somalia, and is being pushed out of Mogadishu by AU forces. Read the full story.

    Stuart Price / African Union-United Nations Support Team via AFP - Getty Images

    A Ugandan soldier serving with AMISOM runs for cover during a firefight on May 23, 2012 west of Deynile.

    Mohamed Abdiwahab / AFP - Getty Images

    Civilians flee Afgoye, site of the world's largest displaced people's camp, as African Union and Somali government troops pushed forward their assault on al Shabaab on May 23, 2012.

    Stuart Price / African Union-United Nations Support Team via AFP - Getty Images

    AMISOM soldiers stand in front of an armored personel carrier on May 22, 2012, during a joint AMISOM and Somali National Army (SNA) operation to seize and liberate territory from al Shabaab in the Afgoye region west of Mogadishu.

     

  • New al-Qaida video suggests alliance with Somalia terror group

    Al-Qaida head Zayman al-Zawahiri is shown speaking in a new propaganda video released Thursday.

    By Robert Windrem, NBC News

    An al-Qaida propaganda outlet has released a new video featuring al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and the leader of Somalia’s Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, apparently indicating that the latter group has been formally incorporated into the umbrella terror organization. 

    The video distributed by al-Qaida’s “As-Sahab Media” shows al-Zawahiri, who ascended to al-Qaida's top post after the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, addressing the camera. Al-Shabaab leader, Mukhtar Abu az-Zubeir is shown in a photo and heard offering a “bayat,” or oath of allegiance, to al-Zawahiri.

    Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News terrorism analyst, said the two men are not seen together in the tape and that it appears al Zawahiri and az-Zubeir recorded their comments separately and that they were then were edited together. 

    According to a translation provided by Kohlmann, al-Zawahiri said in the tape, "Today I bring glad tidings to our Muslim Ummah (community), happy tidings that please the believers and displeases the crusaders, which is the joining of Shabaab al-Mujahideen in Somalia to Qaida't al-Jihad in support of the Jihad unity in the face of the Zionist-crusader campaign and their helpers of cooperatives traitor rulers who brought in the crusader invasive forces to their countries." 

    Car bomb attack in Somali capital kills 8

    The implications of a formal link between al-Shabaab and al-Qaida would be worrisome, considering that as many as 50 American citizens are believed to be members of al-Shabaab in Somalia and at least three are known to have carried out suicide bombings inside that east African nation.  (In addition, another 150 Europeans and others who wouldn't require a visa to enter the U.S. belong to al-Shabaab.) 

    It also may indicate that al-Qaida, decimated by predator drone attacks and the Osama Bin Laden raid, is seeking new recruits for its operations.  

    This is the first video of al-Zawahiri in more than two months. In the last video, issued on Dec. 1, boasted that al-Qaida had seized aid worker Warren Weinstein, a 70-year-old American, in Lahore, Pakistan, last August. There's been no further word on whether Weinstein remains alive since then.