Somali President, Ongeri unhurt in Mogadishu deathtrap

By Juma Kwayera  [in Mogadishu] and agencies

A suicide bomber blew himself and a car bomb exploded outside Al-Jazeera Palace Hotel in Mogadishu minutes after Foreign Minister Sam Ongeri checked-in.

He had just landed with a precious letter emblazoned with Kenya’s presidential seal and bearing a message from President Kibaki for new Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud. Having been dropped at the entry of the hotel alongside Kenyan delegation in armoured African Mission In Somalia (Amisom) vehicles, Prof Ongeri and Mohamoud had done with the introductions, and the Kenyan minister was then reading out a message handed to him by Kibaki when hell broke lose outside, as explosions and gunshots rent the air.

“We were behind the Mogadishu hotel blasts. It was a well planned Mujahideen operation,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, a spokesman for Al Shabaab’s military operation, told Reuters.

“We are responsible for the attack against the so-called president and the delegation,” another Al Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamed Rage told AFP soon after the attack.

“First and foremost we will address the security issue. Priority number one is security. It is also priority number two and three,” Mohamud said, moments after the blasts, continuing for several minutes before being whisked away by security staff.

Meeting room

“There has been a blast around the hotel where the president was. The president is safe. All the people who were inside the hotel are safe,” Colonel Ali Houmed, a spokesman for the African Union force in Somalia, told the AFP news agency.

The first bomb borne by Al Shabaab suicide bomber went off about two minutes after Ongeri was ushered into the meeting room with Mohamoud, who has set up his base at the hotel since he took over on Tuesday.

The bomber, who Al Shabaab confirmed was their member, assigned the terror attack blew himself off at the lawns of the hotel.

Three minutes later, another bomb went off on the road immediately outside the hotel. Three Amisom security officers were reported dead as well, as the unidentified suicide bomber. On Tuesday, Al Shabaab branded Mohamud a “traitor” and vowed to continue their jihad against a government they say serves only Western interests.

Kenya sent troops into Somalia in November to help crush the Islamist insurgency. “The bomb blasts will change nothing.  We are determined. We are there for the cause and until that cause has been achieved,” Bogita Ongeri, a spokesman for Kenya Defence Forces, told Reuters.

From the windows of the hotel, where Ongeri and Mohamoud remained stuck, as security situation was assessed and evacuation planned alongside high-level security escort and route clearance, the bodies of the dead could be seen lying on the lush green lawn.

The greenery, which stood out in Mogadishu’s hot and dry conditions, seemed to symbolise Somalia’s sputtering spring of hope capped on Tuesday through a surprisingly and pleasantly peaceful elections by Members of Parliament representing the county’s fragmented clans.

The bomb appeared to target Kenya’s delegation given how close the timing was to their arrival.

Kenya Defence Forces entered Somalia last October, and nearly one year later today, they are still fighting off Al Shabaab militia. So far it has helped Somali’s own official military group and Amisom to reclaim many towns, and they are now closing in on Kismayu, where military strategists say, lies the heart and brain of Al Shabaab.

The explosion occurred shortly after 1pm, and when The Standard reached Colonel Chege, the head of Amisom security who was co-ordinating the movement of the Kenyan delegation, at 4:20 pm he explained they were finalising plans to take Ongeri team to the airport for the journey back to Nairobi. To the Kenyan delegation the explosion was deafening and frightening, but for the Somalis who have seen so much bloodshed, limbs broken, ribs torn, and lives snuffed out day and night since the government of Siad Barre collapsed in 1991, setting off one of Africa’s bloodiest and deadliest civil war.

“Everyone in the Kenyan delegation is okay, we are now preparing to take them to the airport,’’ assured Chege as he sought to be let off the phone so that he would oversee the evacuation and safe return of his countrymen and women.

The Kenyan delegation included Kenya’s ambassador to Somalia Wafula Wamunyinyi, Parliamentary Defence and Foreign Relations chairman Aden Keynan, and ODM-Kenya Nominated MP Mohammed Affey, who was Kenya’s ambassador to Somalia before being nominated to the House.

Bomb exploded

There were also a team of Kenyan journalists and Foreign ministry officials in the entourage flown from Nairobi on a Kenya Air Force plane. The delegation’s departure at the Wilson Airport was delayed for two hours, and finally took off at noon.

The scene outside the hotel was a bloody mess as the bodies dismembered by the bomb lay outside. The three Amisom soldiers were blown off when the car bomb exploded next to them right outside the hotel’s perimeter fence. The attacks took place in the new hotel part of which is still under construction, and which lies in the area of Mogadishu designated green, meaning highly secured zone.

A television journalist accompanying Prof Ongeri said she had seen “pieces of meat flying all over the place” after the first blast. “I saw a second guy shooting as he stormed towards the hotel,” said Jamila Mohammed, who was outside the hotel when the assailants struck.