At least 18 Somali policemen were killed and at least 15 wounded in a suicide attack by the Islamist al-Shabaab militant group on Thursday morning, police said, in a new attack in the troubled Horn of Africa nation.
Witnesses said the police were gathering for the morning parade in an open courtyard when the suicide bomber blew himself up.
An attack added to a series of attacks by jihadists a decade ago to topple the internationally recognized government in Somalia.
“Eighteen police officers were killed and 15 others wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside the college,” police chief General Mukhtar Hussein Afrah told reporters.
The suicide bomber disguised himself as a police officer to break into the camp, Afrah said.
The target college is the largest police school in Somalia.
“Some policemen were lining up while others were arriving when the disguised man in a police uniform detonated himself,” Ali Hussein, who was at the scene, told AFP. “Ambulances transported the dead and wounded,” he said.
Ambulances and paramedics rushed to the scene to rescue the wounded and transport the bodies of the victims.
Police said the toll could have been greater had the suicide bomber detonated himself in the crowd.
Police commander Ibrahim Mohammed said the bomber “could have caused more casualties if he had reached the center of the area, where the number of those gathered was greater.”
On Thursday evening, police officers attended the funerals of their colleagues killed in the attack.
Al-Shabaab, the Islamist group loyal to al-Qaeda, which regularly targets police forces, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying 27 people were killed, including “high-ranking officers.”
– Continuing attacks –
Young rebels were expelled from the Somali capital Mogadishu in August 2011 and later lost most of their strongholds. But they still control vast rural areas where they carry out attacks and suicide attacks that often target government and civilian targets in Mogadishu as well as Somali and foreign military bases.
On October 14, 512 people were killed in a suspected al Shabaab attack by a truck bomb targeting a busy commercial crossing in Mogadishu, the deadliest in the country’s history.
Since then, the United States has stepped up its air strikes targeting jihadist leaders.
On November 21, the US military announced that a US strike targeted a training camp for al Shabaab that killed more than 100 militants.
On November 13, Washington announced it had killed 40 Islamic extremists in Somalia in four days in five raids targeting al-Shabaab and elements of the Islamic state.
Colonel Rob Manning, a spokesman for the US Defense Department, said the raids resulted in “killing 36 young Islamists and four gunmen from the Islamic state.”
Washington is stepping up its air raids on jihadis, with the African Union (AU) force in Somalia preparing to withdraw 1,000 of its 22,000 troops deployed in the country as part of a plan that would see its full withdrawal by December 2020.
The Somali army has yet to prove its ability to ensure security despite receiving training from several foreign countries.
Washington fears that the cuts will hamper efforts to combat the jihadists.
Last month, a report by UN monitoring bodies said a faction of the Islamic state in Somalia had expanded significantly over the past year, carrying out attacks in the northeastern region of Puntland and receiving funding from group leaders in Syria and Iraq.
