Somali case has chilling echoes of Christmas bomber
It appears that the African peace keeping troops did what escaped the US and European authorities, and arrested a potential bomber with a syringe and explosive chemicals before he boarded the flight. It is no surprise that Somalia lies just across the Gulf from Yemen, but this is a fact that seemingly eludes Western intelligence analysts as they continue to focus on Iraq and Afghanistan.
A man tried to board a commercial airliner in Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that could have caused an explosion in a case bearing chilling similarities to the terrorist plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The Somali man – whose name has not yet been released – was arrested by African Union peacekeeping troops before the Nov. 13 Daallo Airlines flight took off. It had been scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai. A Somali police spokesman, Abdulahi Hassan Barise, said the suspect is in Somali custody.
“We don’t know whether he’s linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed,” said Barise.
A Nairobi-based diplomat said the incident in Somalia is similar to the attempted attack on the Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in that the Somali man had a syringe, a bag of powdered chemicals and liquid – tools similar to those used in the Detroit attack
Beyond the piracy of Somalia, there is a land war being fought there of tragic dimensions, and that could well see the Horn of Africa ceded to Al Qaeda through inaction of the Western nations. Somalia is the definition of a failed state; it has not had a functional civil government in decades, and has been the scene of cruel inter-tribal fighting. The Somalia conflict has tested the resolve of the United States, Ethiopia and the AU - all of whom left the war torn country with their tail between their legs, unable to affect a resolution. Civil structure has failed, casualties continue to climb and the world watches impotent.
Sphere: Related ContentEven before the latest surge in violence you could get a sense of the precariousness of life in Mogadishu from a quick tour of the hospital. In the dark, bungalow-like emergency room, five men lay on soiled, torn beds. All had abdominal gunshot wounds; plastic drip bags lay between their legs or on the floor. A man sat on a plastic chair next to his wounded brother and waved a paper fan over his head to chase away flies.
All the men had been injured a day earlier, when a pro-government Islamist militia fought a unit of the government’s “proper” army for control of an intersection in the government-controlled area of the capital. “I was standing when the fighting started. I tried to hide but they shot me,” one man wheezed. Across the yard in the intensive care unit, another dark bungalow packed with flies and the sick, a man waved a fan over the burnt-to-white flesh of his small son, caught in the fire when a grenade had been tossed into their house during a clash between two rival gangs.
A mother looking after another burnt child said: “We pray for peace – we have nothing but prayers. This is the best hospital in Mogadishu and we don’t have electricity or running water.”
Somalia: one week in hell – inside the city the world forgot | World news | The Guardian
