Hardline Islamist insurgents have plans to attack the Somali capital’s seaport with vessels packed full of explosives, African Union peacekeepers and moderate Islamists said on Friday.
Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab fighters are waging a deadly insurgency against the fragile Western-backed government, intent on imposing a harsher version of Sharia law throughout the impoverished nation.
“We have information that al Shabaab want to use a boat laden with explosives to attack the seaport,” Major Barigye Ba-hoku, spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM), told Reuters.
“We don’t know when they might attack, but they are planning it,” he said.
The AU also received intelligence from inside al Shabaab that trucks and animals such as donkeys and dogs could be used to target African Union (AU) troops and destabilise President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s administration further.
“We know they are preparing trucks in the lower Shabelle region for suicide attacks,” said Ba-hoku.
AMISOM Says Al-Shabaab wants to attach Mogadishu Seaport
Published: April 2, 2010
