At least 35 people have been confirmed dead and several others wounded in simultaneous car bomb attacks in a town in central Somalia.
\nAccording to international media reports, a senior police official told\u00a0reporters on Wednesday that the death toll rose sharply from the 15 reported earlier in the day.
\nSecurity official Abdullahi Adan said that the “terrorists” attacked Mahas town using vehicles loaded with explosives.
\nMahas district commissioner Mumin Mohamed Halane told state radio that one bomb targeted his house and the other hit the home of a federal lawmaker.
\nAbdullahi Osman, a shopkeeper in the town of Mahas, told\u00a0reporters that he counted at least 15 dead people including soldiers, militiamen and civilians.
\n“Many houses were destroyed. Fragments of the bombs injured people far from the site. The death toll may rise.”
\nAl Shabab\u2019s media office claimed responsibility in a statement, saying it had targeted “apostate militias and soldiers”.
\nThe group put the number of dead at 87. Al Shabab often gives higher casualty figures than local officials and residents.
\nAs per international media reports, witnesses said the blasts occurred near a restaurant not far from a district administration building.
\n“I saw the dead bodies of nine civilians including women and children, this was a horrible attack,” said one witness, Adan Hassan.
\nSomalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has declared “all-out war” against Al Shabab, which has been waging an insurgency against the internationally-backed federal government for 15 years.
\nAlthough forced out of the country’s main urban centres around 10 years ago, Al Shabab remains entrenched in vast swathes of rural central and southern Somalia. Mahas is at the center of the ongoing government offensive against the group.
\nThe Somali army, together with local militias, recently opened a key supply route to Mahas after it had long been under siege.
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