MOGADISHU: Nine people including a senior local government official were killed on Wednesday in a suicide bombing in southern Somalia claimed by the Al-Shabaab jihadist group, reports AFP.
The attack occurred outside the administrative office in the town of Marka, where the district commissoner Abdullahi Ali Ahmed Wafow was speaking with local people, police said.
The police are still investigating the incident but there are already indications that a suicide bomber carried out the deadly attack.
Al-Shaabab claimed responsibility in a brief statement, saying the martydom operation had targeted the commissioner.
The bomber ran up to the commissioner and blew himself up, witness Abdukadir Hassan said.
I was close to where the incident occurred, the scene was horrible with these shattered pieces of human flesh all around.
Somalia's new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said this month that ending Al-Shabaab's insurgency required more than a military approach, but that his government would negotiate with the group only when the time is right.
Its fighters were driven out of the capital in 2011 by an African Union force but the group still controls swathes of countryside and has the capacity to wage deadly strikes on civilian and military targets.
Last week, Al-Shabaab launched a rare incursion into neighbouring Ethiopia, with regional authorities there saying they had killed about 100 militants.
