At least 15 killed in Somali suicide attack

The aftermath of a suicide bombing in Mogadishu

(Image credit: Stringer/Getty Images)

published 9 April 2017

At least 15 people were killed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on Sunday by a suicide car bombing believed to be a failed assassination attempt targeting the new Somali military chief, Ahmed Mohamed Irfid.

The blast occurred on a busy street near the Somali defense ministry. The bomber attempted to crash the armed vehicle into an envoy carrying Irfid but hit a minibus carrying civilians instead. "When we arrived at the scene, we counted bodies of 15 people, most of them were severed," said Mire Aden, a police chief. "A number of soldiers are among the dead," Aden reported, and none of the injured civilians survived.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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