Al-Shabab claims responsibility for an explosion at a Somalia military training school
It was not immediately clear if anyone else was injured or killed in the explosion at the Jaalle Siyaad Military Academy, one of Somalia's main training centers for army recruits.
Al-Shabab, which has long staged deadly attacks in Somalia against both government and civilian targets, said a suicide bomber targeted a Western delegation that was training recruits.
It was not immediately clear what delegation might have been there. The United States, European Union and Turkey are among those who have been involved in Somali military training.
'The suicide bomber was wearing a suicide vest and was intercepted before reaching his target. He blew himself up, causing minimal casualties,' Adan Hassan, one of the recruits and a witness, told The Associated Press by phone.
The military academy was last targeted in July 2023, when a suicide bomber disguised in uniform killed at least 25 soldiers and wounded more than 70 others.
Al-Shabab frequently targets military installations as part of its insurgency aiming to topple the Somali government and impose its strict version of Islamic law.
The Somali government in recent months has intensified security operations to crack down on militants. Last week, government forces conducted an operation in the central Hiran region where al-Shabab militants had taken key towns and villages.
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The Independent
41 minutes ago
- The Independent
Islamic State and al-Qaida threat is intense in Africa, with growing risks in Syria, UN experts say
The threat from Islamic State and al-Qaida extremists and their affiliates is most intense in parts of Africa, and risks are growing in Syria, which both groups view as a 'a strategic base for external operations,' U.N. experts said in a new report. Their report to the U.N. Security Council circulated Wednesday said West Africa 's al-Qaida-linked Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin group, known as JNIM, and East Africa 's al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab have continued to increase the territory under their control. The experts monitoring sanctions against the two groups said 'the organization's pivot towards parts of Africa continued" partly because of Islamic State losses in the Middle East due to counterterrorism pressures. There are also 'increasing concerns about foreign terrorist fighters returning to Central Asia and Afghanistan, aiming to undermine regional security,' they said. The Islamic State also continues to represent 'the most significant threat' to Europe and the Americas, the experts said, often by individuals radicalized via social media and encrypted messaging platforms by its Afghanistan-based Khorasan group. In the United States, the experts said several alleged terrorist attack plots were 'largely motivated by the Gaza and Israel conflict,' or by individuals radicalized by IS, also known as ISIL. They pointed to an American who pledged support to IS and drove into a crowd in New Orleans on Jan. 1, killing 14 people in the deadliest attack by al-Qaida or the Islamic State in the U.S. since 2016. In addition, they said, 'Authorities disrupted attacks, including an ISIL-inspired plot to conduct a mass shooting at a military base in Michigan,' and the IS Khorasan affiliate issued warnings of plots targeting Americans. In Africa's Sahel region, the experts said, JNIM expanded its area of operations, operating 'with relative freedom' in northern Mali and most of Burkina Faso. There was also a resurgence of activity by the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, 'particularly along the Niger and Nigeria border, where the group was seeking to entrench itself.' 'JNIM reached a new level of operational capability to conduct complex attacks with drones, improvised explosive devices and large numbers of fighters against well-defended barracks,' the experts said. In East Africa, they said, 'al-Shabab maintained its resilience, intensifying operations in southern and central Somalia' and continuing its ties with Yemen's Houthi rebels. The two groups have reportedly exchanged weapons and the Houthis have trained al-Shabab fighters, they said. Syria, the experts said, remains 'in a volatile and precarious phase,' six months after the ouster of President Bashar Assad, with unnamed countries warning of growing risks posed by both IS and al-Qaida. 'Member states estimated that more than 5,000 foreign terrorist fighters were involved in the military operation in which Damascus was taken on Dec. 8,' the experts' 27-page report said. Syria's new interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa led the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, once an al-Qaida affiliate that later split from it. He has promised that the country will transition to a system that includes Syria's mosaic of religious and ethnic groups under fair elections, but skeptics question whether that will actually happen. The experts expressed concern at the Syrian military's announcement of several senior appointments including 'prominent Syrian armed faction leaders' and six positions for foreigners — three with the rank of brigadier general and three with the rank of colonel. 'The ideological affiliation of many of these individuals was unknown, although several were likely to hold violent extremist views and external ambitions," the report said. As for financing, the experts said the HTS takeover in Syria was considered to pose financial problems for the Islamic State and likely to lead to a decline in its revenues. Salaries for Islamic State fighters were reduced to $50-$70 per month and $35 per family, 'lower than ever, and not paid regularly, suggesting financial difficulties,' said the experts, who did not give previous salaries or family payments. They said both al-Qaida and the Islamic State vary methods to obtain money according to locations and their ability to exploit resources, tax local communities, kidnap for ransom and exploit businesses. While the extremist groups predominantly move money through cash transfers and informal money transfer systems known as hawalas, the experts said the Islamic State has increasingly used female couriers and hawala systems where data is stored in the cloud to avoid detection, and 'safe drop boxes' where money is deposited at exchange offices and can only be retrieved with a password or code.
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Trump aid cuts will push Nigerians into the arms of Boko Haram militants
Drastic cuts to humanitarian aid in north-eastern Nigeria could prove a boon to one of the world's most deadly militant groups, Boko Haram, aid agencies have warned.A reduction of funding in recent months has forced the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) to ration its support, and now it has completely run out."It will be much easier for militants to lure youths to join them and spiral insecurity across the whole region," Trust Mlambo, head of operations in the area for WFP, told the around the world for kidnapping more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok more than a decade ago, Boko Haram has taken thousands of people captive during its raids and forced more than a million from their village Haram was initially a religious Muslim group founded in the early 2000s that was opposed to Western education. It went on to launch military operations in 2009 with the political aim of creating an Islamic state, causing mayhem across the region - including in neighbouring countries such as Cameroon, Chad and has been classified as one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups, and a splinter group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in Abubakar has lost more than half her family because of attacks on her village in Borno state and illness. "My husband and six children were killed in the bush," the 40-year-old told the BBC. Four of her children survived, including one recently rescued from captivity after being kidnapped by the fled to Gwoza, a garrison town to the west of the city Maiduguri, the capital of Borno is set at the foot of a stretch of breathtaking rocky hills. But beyond the hills, camped out in dense forested areas lies the danger the town's tens of thousands of camp residents fear - Boko Haram."I could never go back to the village," said Ms Abubakar. "Life in the village was unbearable, we were always on the run."She has been trying to rebuild her life after it was shattered. She has found a new husband at Gwoza's camp for internally displaced persons and together they have a seven-month-old baby. Ms Abubakar is among close to 1.4 million displaced people in north-east Nigeria who are fully dependent on humanitarian aid for spoke to the BBC after bringing her youngest child to the aid distribution centre at Gwoza. She rocked the baby while waiting for her turn at the registration centre, holding her blue debit support for the month is credited onto the card and the amount depends on the holder's family size. Ms Abubukar received $20 (£15) - and with it, she bought a sack of maize and several other food said she was grateful for the money, but the amount could not sustain her family for a month. "We don't have any more to give after this [month's] cycle," said Mr Mlambo of the WFP. "Our warehouses are empty, and we just are desperate for any generous donations."The US State Department acknowledged its recent reorganisation of humanitarian assistance programmes had resulted in some cuts, in line with President Donald Trump's America First policy."The United States continues to be the most generous nation in the world, and we urge other nations to increase their humanitarian efforts," a senior State Department official told the has said previously that the US government's global support to the WFP - about 80% - has not been the ground in Nigeria, the lower support from all donors to the WFP this year has already resulted in a spike in malnutrition rates.Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said the number of children with the most severe and deadly form of malnutrition more than doubled in the first half of the year."Six-hundred-and-fifty-two children have already died in our facilities since the beginning of 2025 due to lack of timely access to care," the medical charity true scale of the crisis exceeds all expectations, MSF's country representative for Nigeria Ahmed Aldikhari said in a added that 2024 had "marked a turning point in northern Nigeria's nutritional crisis", as major donors including the US, UK and the European Union had scaled down or halted their support altogether. Nigeria is one of Africa's largest economies and its most populous nation but has long been beset by rampant has also undergone massive inflation and currency devaluation in recent years and failed to bring under control the insurgency in the north-east of the its leadership has lately publicly recognised the malnutrition challenge the government weeks ago, Vice-President Kashim Shettima said malnutrition had deprived "40% of Nigerian children under five their full physical and cognitive potential", and promised to tackle statement followed the inauguration, last month, of a nutrition board, which he described as a "war room to battle against malnutrition in every corner of the country".But beyond the rallying call, the question is how fast and how far it can act to halt and reverse the staggering levels of undernutrition amid the sweeping and sudden cuts to funding much of the region relied on for than 150 donor-funded clinics that have been treating malnutrition in the north-east of the country are also facing imminent in Gwoza, a mother of two feels defeated after learning her first child, Amina, is now malnourished despite her best efforts to provide healthy food."I feel bad, because every mother wants her baby to be healthy," 25-year-old Hauwa Badamasi told the BBC. She said she had been unable to access her family's farm near her home village for years because of insecurity."The aid has stopped and people are killed on the farm. What are we going to do with our lives?" she asked as three-year-old Amina ate the nutritional supplement she had just been given at the Hausari B serves some 90,000 people, many of them farmers - like Ms Badamasi - displaced by the insurgency."We will be in a dire situation with no food and no medicine," said Ms Badamasi. "Our survival depends on these essentials."She was given a bag of the supplement - peanut paste - to continue treatment at home. It may well be the last, unless the funding situation WFP's Mr Mlambo offered a bleak assessment of things to come, suggesting the lack of food could push desperate people back into the hands of the militants."If people here feel that their livelihood [is gone], they can't even have the next meal, for sure, they will be pushed to go just across the [hills] to enrol," said Mr those living in Gwoza feel protected by the military's presence there, they have little faith in the army's ability to end the insurgency - and fear for their reporting by the BBC's Kyla Herrmannsen You may also be interested in: Nigeria's Chibok girls: Parents of kidnapped children heartbroken - againWhat is USAID and why is Trump closing it?Trump global aid cuts risk 14 million deaths in five years, report saysNigeria's kidnap crisis: Inside story of a ransom negotiator Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
BBC News
10 hours ago
- BBC News
Angola's petrol protest death toll rises to 22 as medics overwhelmed
At least 22 people, including a police officer, have been killed and 200 others injured in protest against a rise in the price of fuel that began on Monday, Interior Minister Manuel Homem has say more than 1,200 people have also been arrested in what began as a strike by taxi drivers against the price hike and then escalated into one of the most widespread and disruptive waves of protest the country has seen in recent including major supermarkets, remain closed and many people have opted to stay at at public hospitals in the capital, Luanda - who asked not to be named - told the BBC emergency services had been overwhelmed over the last 24 hours. On Monday and Tuesday sporadic gunfire was heard across the city."We have received many protesters with serious injuries, including multiple traumas. Sadly, some have died. We fear the death toll may be higher than the official figures suggest," one doctor issued his statement after a cabinet meeting chaired by President João Lourenço on Wednesday."In the past two days, we have witnessed actions that amount to acts of vandalism and endanger public security in the provinces of Luanda, Huambo, Benguela and Huíla. However, we want to inform citizens that the overall public security situation in the country remains stable," the minister buildings had been looted or destroyed across the country, including supermarkets, shops and banks, he buses and private vehicles have also been damaged during the unrest."The acts carried out by the protesters, worsened by the presence of infiltrators with criminal intentions, show that the phenomenon has gone beyond a mere demand and now represents a threat to public order," the presidency said in a post on Facebook on President Lourenço had downplayed concerns over the decision to raise the price of diesel by more than 33%. It was introduced in early July as part of plans to remove fuel subsidies in the oil-rich told CNN Portugal the protesters were using petrol prices as a pretext to undermine the government. The taxi unions - which called a three-day strike - have distanced themselves from the looting and destruction, stating they do not support such Tuesday night, a flight from Frankfurt to Luanda was cancelled. A British passenger told the BBC they were told it was due to the "political situation" in Angola.A Lufthansa spokesperson confirmed the cancellation, saying "safety and security for our passengers and crew has top priority".Several consulates and embassies have issued security warnings to foreign nationals. The US embassy advised "US citizens to remain vigilant and limit non-essential movement within Luanda".In the capital, long queues have formed at petrol stations as citizens try to refuel and stock up on essential officers are deployed across the city and there are also many military and police vehicles on the coalition the Patriotic United Front (FPU) said it stood in solidarity with "all layers of society currently experiencing the effects of the severe economic and social crisis Angola is facing".It added this "was a result of public policies disconnected from our country's reality, poor governance, corruption and the government's lack of human sensitivity".However, the FPU also said it "strongly condemned" the acts of destruction of public and private property carried out by rise in petrol prices has pushed up fares for urban Angolans who rely on taxis and has also driven up the price of staple foods and other basics - as suppliers who transport those goods by road are passing on their additional costs to consumers. More BBC stories on Angola: Largest pink diamond in 300 years found in AngolaRediscovering the African roots of Brazil's martial art capoeiraEx-Trafigura boss convicted of bribery in landmark caseIsabel dos Santos hits out over UK's 'dirty money' sanctions Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
