Armed group Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the massive car bombing in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Saturday that killed at least 81 people, including two Turkish nationals, reported Reuters. The car bomb exploded at a busy checkpoint in the southwest of the city. Scores of people were wounded in the blast.
In an audio message, the Al Qaeda-allied Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the bombing at the busy Ex-Control checkpoint northwest of Mogadishu.
“The blast targeted a convoy of Turkish and Somali forces and they suffered great loss,” said Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab’s spokesman, two days after the incident.
Rage accused Turkey of trying to take all of Somalia’s resources and vowed to continue targeting their people in the country.
“We shall always fight…the Turkish who work with the apostate government of Turkey. We are not against innocent Turkish muslim citizens,” he said.
Notably, Turkey is a large donor and investor in Somalia, especially in humanitarian aid and reconstruction. Some Turkish engineers were present at time of the blast, constructing a road into the city.
Al-Shabaab also apologized to the civilians who were targeted in the bombing. The armed group retains control of large rural swaths of the country.
Mogadishu is regularly attacked by al-Shabab, which has fought for more than 10 years to topple the Somali government which is backed by the United Nations and African Union peacekeeping troops. Saturday’s attack was the biggest to hit Somalia since a truck exploded in 2017 near a fuel tanker in Mogadishu that killed over 500 people.
Somalia’s national security agency said the attack was planned outside the country. The National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) did not name the country that it said was involved in the blast.
NISA also said it would take help from an unnamed foreign intelligence organization in the investigation.
