A suicide bomber killed at least 19 people including three Somali government ministers on Thursday at a graduation ceremony in a Mogadishu hotel, witnesses and officials said. It was the worst attack in the lawless Horn of Africa nation since June when hard-line al Shabaab rebels killed the security minister and at least 30 other people in a suicide bombing at a hotel in the central town of Baladwayne.
The UN-backed government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed controls little more than a few streets of the coastal capital. In the days ahead of Thursday's attack, residents said it had apparently been planning a fresh offensive against the rebels.
The bombing showed once again the insurgents' ability to strike the government at will, and it will heighten frustration in the country's fragile administration over delayed pledges of military and financial support from Western donors. A Reuters reporter at the Shamo Hotel said it was packed with graduates from Benadir University, their parents and officials when a powerful blast tore through the ceremony.
"Human flesh was everywhere," he said. Government officials said Health Minister Qamar Aden Ali, Education Minister Ahmed Abdulahi Waayeel and Higher Education Minister Ibrahim Hassan Addow all died in the explosion. Sports Minister Saleban Olad Roble was injured. The African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM said the blast was caused by a suicide bomber and 19 civilians were killed.
"Such an inhumane and cowardly act aimed at stalling the peace process will not deter the resolve and determination of the African Union to support the people of Somalia in their quest for peace and reconciliation," it said in a statement. Ali Yasin Gedi, vice-chairman of Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation, said more than 40 people were wounded, including the dean of Benadir's medical college, who Gedi said had been evacuated by plane to neighbouring Kenya.
"A lot of my friends were killed," another witness, medical student Mohamed Abdulqadir, told Reuters. "I was sitting next to a lecturer who also died. He had been speaking to the gathering just a few minutes before the explosion." Dubai-based Al Arabiya Television said one of its cameramen, Hasan al-Zubair, had been killed.
Suspicion for the blast immediately fell on the al Shabaab group, which also struck at the heart of the main AU military base in Mogadishu with twin suicide car bombs in September, killing 17 peacekeepers including the deputy force commander.
Somali government officials say al Shabaab has hundreds of foreign fighters in its ranks, and the United States accuses the Islamist group of being al Qaeda's proxy in the country. Western security experts say the nation has become a safe haven for militants, including jihadists from overseas, who are using it to plot attacks across the region and beyond.
Al Shabaab has threatened to strike Uganda's capital Kampala and Burundi's capital Bujumbura because both nations contributed troops to the 5,200-strong AU peacekeeping force AMISOM. Kenyan security forces say they are on high alert on their frontier with Somalia after al Shabaab fighters seized several small towns on the Somali side of the border in recent weeks.
Fighting has killed at least 19,000 Somalis since the start of 2007 and driven another 1.5 million from their homes, triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian emergencies. The anarchy has also spilled into the waters offshore, where heavily armed Somali pirates have made tens of millions of dollars in ransoms by terrorising strategic shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden, which links Europe to Asia.