Car bombs: Al-Shabaab’s weapon to impose control in Somalia

Mahmoud Mohammadi

Hardly a month passes that the terrorist Al-Shabaab movement in Somalia, which affiliated with al-Qaeda, does not carry out an attack more ferocious than the one that preceded it, spreading terror and fear in Somalia and its people on a continuous basis.

Al-Shabaab has been taking advantage of the political and security turmoil in Somalia for several years, trying day after day to impose its control by launching attacks against the Somali security forces using heavy weapons and car bombs.

The latest of those attacks was on Saturday, September 25, when 15 people were killed in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in a car bomb attack on a checkpoint near the presidential palace.

Targeting the presidential palace

The attack, which killed 15 people, most of them civilians, including a woman and her two children, was claimed by Al-Shabaab, according to Makawi Ahmed Modi, the police chief of Hamar Jajab region, where the attack occurred.

Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack, which targeted the main security checkpoint of the presidential palace, government officials, and others who were on their way to the palace.

Police spokesman Ali Hassan told the German Press Agency that the explosion was powerful and occurred at a checkpoint located about a kilometer from the presidential palace.

History of bomb attacks

Despite the ferocity of the attack, it is not the first of its kind in which the terrorist movement used car bombs to carry out terrorist operations in Somalia. Since the exit of US forces in January 2021, Somalia has witnessed repeated terrorist bombings and attacks claimed by Al-Shabaab.

On June 27, the terrorist movement launched a car bomb attack against a military base in Galmudug in the center of the country, killing 30 people, including soldiers and civilians.

Fifteen people were killed in separate attacks in the country on February 7, including 12 soldiers and an intelligence commander, and others were seriously injured, as a result of an explosive device planted on the side of the road linking the cities of Dusamareb and Guriel in the Galgaduud region in the center of the country.

On January 31, after the departure of the US forces, at least five civilians were killed and ten others wounded in an attack by Al-Shabab on a hotel in central Mogadishu.

Somali condemnation

While the Somali government condemned the ongoing terrorist attacks on military bases, checkpoints and positions, it also announced that its forces supported by peacekeeping forces have been able to inflict dozens of deaths among the ranks of Al-Shabaab in the ongoing confrontations between the two sides since about 2007.

The Somali capital, Mogadishu, has witnessed regular terrorist attacks carried out by Al-Shabaab militants, with the aim of spreading the insurgency in order to overthrow the Somali government supported by the international community.