Suicide bombers kill 32 in deadliest attack on Western-backed government

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

Perilous Times

Suicide bombers kill 32 in deadliest attack on Western-backed government

Two suicide bombers from Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked Islamist insurgency killed six MPs and 26 others in the deadliest attack yet on the country’s Western-backed government.
 

By Mike Pflanz, Nairobi
Published: 3:52PM BST 24 Aug 2010

Suicide bombers kill 34 in deadliest attack on Western-backed government

An injured woman is carried to Medina hospital as fighting rages in Mogadishu

The midmorning blasts, which followed an hour-long gun battle, left more than 40 people injured, most of them civilians.

The raid targeted a meeting of MPs at a hotel in the south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, close to the presidential palace.
 
wo men dressed as government soldiers approached the Muna Hotel, killed a guard, and ran into the lobby spraying gunfire. One of them then detonated a suicide device.

Somalia’s minister of information, Abdirahman Omar Osman, said that six MPs had died in the blasts, as well as five government soldiers and 20 civilians, making it the deadliest ever attack against the transitional federal government.

Mr Osman immediately blamed al-Shabaab, the country’s leading Islamist insurgent group for the attack.

“This is a deplorable act in this holy month of Ramadan. It shows their brutality and lack of respect for humanity,” he said.

Al-Shabaab warned on Monday that it planned a “massive war” on “invaders” in Somalia, an apparent reference to the AU mission, made up of 6,300 mostly Ugandan and Burundian soldiers.