A senior Somali Police Chief, Farhan Mohamoud Adan, was on Friday night, killed in an explosion that targeted his convoy in the Middle Shabelle region to the south of the country, Interior Minister, Ahmed Moallem, announced on his Facebook page on Saturday.
“Police Commissioner, Farhan Mohamoud Adan, known as Farhan Qarole, was killed in an explosion targeting his convoy in the Middle Shabelld region on Friday night,” Moallem wrote.
He went on to explain that security officials told him that Mohamoud’s convoy was “bombed the moment it passed into the Labondo area, returning from the town of Basra, which was liberated from the grip of the Al-Shabaab movement.”
“The same security details said the explosion killed the security official and four of Mohamoud’s bodyguards.”
Before the attack on the police chief’s convoy, the Somalian federal army had announced that it had successfully liberated five towns from Al-Shabaab’s control, including the town of Basra, after confrontations with the Islamist militants fighters.
State media, Sawt El-Jaish, also reported on Friday that the confrontations resulted in the death of five insurgents.
“The town of Basra, a strategic location for the Al-Shabaab militants movement as it links the regions of Lower and Middle Shabelle, at it was very important it was liberated on Friday.
“Unfortunately, in the night of same day, Mohamoud was targeted and killed by the militants,” Moallem said.
Since 2004, the Al-Shabaab militant group has been waging a war against successive governments in Somalia backed by the Al-Qaeda group and has claimed responsibility for numerous terrorist operations in the Horn of Africa nation which has claimed thousands of lives.
The war, according to several claims by the group, is aimed at overthrowing the government and setting up a regime based on strict Islamic Sharia Laws.