In relation to Monday’s suicide bombing at an army base in Mogadishu, which killed at least 30 soldiers and injured more than 70 others, at least three officers, among them a military colonel, have been detained. According to reports, as authorities step up their investigation into the circumstances leading up to the attack, more arrests may be made. The main objective of the investigation is to find out who helped the suicide bomber enter the base. The Lower Shabelle natives who were the victims had come to the city for training. The soldiers were being counted while the suicide bomber blew himself up while they were in a line.
Significant concerns have been raised by the circumstances surrounding Al Shabaab’s invasion of the army camp. The Speaker of the Somali Parliament, Sheikh Adan Madobe, is one of the skeptics and has deemed the Al Shabaab attack on the Jaalle Siyaad military base as unacceptable. He requests a direct response from the Armed Forces Command. The president and prime minister have not yet offered any comments on the incident as of this writing. The al Qaeda-linked group was driven from vast swaths of territory in southern Somalia by government forces and allied militiamen last year, but the militants have continued to conduct lethal raids.