Over 30 killed in Al-Shabaab attack on busy Mogadishu beach – Technologist

An Al-Shabaab suicide bomber and gunmen attacked a busy beach in the Somali capital Mogadishu, killing 32 people and wounding scores more, in one of the deadliest attacks in months, police said on Saturday, August 3. The Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists have been waging an insurgency against the internationally backed federal government for more than 17 years and have previously targeted the Lido beach area, popular with business people and officials.

“More than 32 civilians died in this attack and about 63 others were wounded, some of them critically,” police spokesman Abdifatah Adan Hassan told reporters during a press conference. “Targeting and blasting to kill 32 members from the civilian population means these Kharijites are not going to target only government centers, soldiers and officials,” he said, using the term Somali officials adopt to describe Al-Shabaab.

The assault, for which Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility in a post on a pro-Shabaab website, began late on Friday when a suicide bomber detonated a device and gunmen stormed the area, police and witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Officer Mohamed Omar told AFP they had “shot civilians randomly”. He said security forces had ended the attack and killed five gunmen, while a sixth member of the group “blew himself (up) at the beach.” Witnesses said there were many people at the popular location when the explosion occurred.

Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for numerous bombings and attacks in Mogadishu and other parts of the country, whose government is pressing on with an offensive against the Islamist militants.

The Lido area has been the target of previous attacks, including a six-hour Al-Shabaab siege of a beachside hotel in 2023, which left six civilians dead and 10 wounded. Five people were killed in a powerful car bomb blast at a café in the capital last month. In March, the militants killed three people and wounded 27 in an hours-long siege of another Mogadishu hotel, breaking a relative lull in the fighting.