A young woman strapped with explosives blew herself up Wednesday at a ceremony in the Somali national theatre, killing the country’s Olympic and football bosses.
She detonated her suicide belt as Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali was on a podium addressing 200 people gathered to mark the first anniversary of the country’s satellite TV network, an AFP reporter who witnessed the incident said.
Several witnesses said Somali Olympic Committee president Aden Yabarow Wiish and Somali Football Federation chief Said Mohamed Nur were killed in the blast. The prime minister, and seven other ministers standing beside him when the young woman set off her explosives, were unharmed. “The bodies of the two people killed in the blast have been taken by the Somali police,” police officer Mohamed Abdi told AFP. Seconds after the blast, chaos filled the venue as the dead and the wounded could be seen slumped on their chairs and lying on the floor while police escorted some of the injured to awaiting ambulances. Somalia’s Chinese-built national theatre was re-opened last month by President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and the prime minister for the first time in 20 years. The two killed officials had last week inspected the reconstruction of the national stadium in Mogadishu, a city which had slowly been coming back to life since Somali and African Union forces secured most of it late last year.
