At least two people were killed Tuesday when a suicide bomber attacked the house of a senior militia commander in the central Somali town of Galkayo, officials said. “A man wearing an explosive vest blew himself up after he was stopped by security guards” as he tried to enter the main gate of Abdi Hasan Qeybdid, a former police chief and warlord, said local security official Abdisalan Mohamed. “There was a shootout between him and the guards, before a big explosion that shook the main gate, killing two guards and the bomber,” Mohamed said, adding that four people were injured but that Qeybdid was not hurt.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a string of blasts including roadside bombs and grenade explosions set off in recent months in the war-torn Horn of Africa nation. Most have been set off inside the Somali capital Mogadishu, where Islamist Shebab insurgents have largely pulled out of fixed positions and switched to guerrilla tactics against the weak Western-backed government. Galkayo straddles the border between the separate self-proclaimed independent regions of Puntland and Galmudug, both of which oppose the Al-Qaeda linked Shebab, who control Somali regions further south.
