At least 25 killed and 35 wounded in Al Shabab attack in Somalia

At least 25 people were killed on Monday in Somalia, including a regional minister, and 35 were wounded in an attack with two car bombs by the jihadist group Al Shabab against a military base in the city of Beledweyne (centre), police told Efe. 

"25 dead and 35 injured after two explosions hit the Lamagalay military base" in the centre of the city, Beledweyne police commander Mohamed Geele told Efe. 

Most of the dead are civilians, including the Minister of Health of Hirshabelle State (where the city is located), Zakaria Mohamed Ahmed; the deputy governor of the Hiran region (included in Hirshabelle), Abukar Maadey; several local legislators and members of the security forces.  

Al Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, which caused extensive material damage and was condemned by the governor of Hiran, Ali Jayte Osman. 

"Their brutal acts will never weaken the public uprising," Osman told the Somali national news agency SONNA. 

The attack came hours after the Somali government reported that a senior Al Shabab leader, Abdullahi Nadir, a co-founder of Al Shabab, was killed in a counter-terrorism operation in Somalia on Saturday. 

"Abdullahi Nadir, one of the top leaders of Al Shabab terrorists, long wanted by the Somali government, was killed in an operation conducted by the Somali National Army and international security partners," the Somali Ministry of Information said.  

Nadir was killed in the village of Haramka in the southern region of Middle Jubba, the government said, without clarifying which "international partners" were involved in the operation, although the US usually supports the Somali army with drones in the fight against terrorism.  

The US had offered a three million dollar reward for information leading to Nadir, a man close to current Al Shabab leader Abu Ubaidah (also known as Ahmed Diriye), who has been responsible for the group's finances and media, among other duties.  

The jihadist's death came after Somalia's president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, declared on 23 August a "total war" to "eliminate" Al Shabab, whose terrorists had taken over a well-known Mogadishu hotel for thirty hours and killed 21 people.  

Since then, several military operations have been carried out against the fundamentalists, supported by the United States, which last month killed "more than 100 members" of Al Shabab, according to the Somali government.  

Al Shabab, a group affiliated since 2012 with the al-Qaeda network, frequently carries out terrorist attacks in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and other parts of Somalia to overthrow the central government - backed by the international community - and establish by force a Wahhabi-style (ultraconservative) Islamic state.  

The jihadist group controls rural areas in central and southern Somalia and also attacks neighbouring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.  

Somalia has been in a state of war and chaos since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown, leaving the country without effective government and in the hands of Islamist militias and warlords.