{{Al-Qaeda-linked militants al-Shabaab attacked the Somali presidential palace compound on Friday, blasting through a gate with a car bomb and engaging in a fierce gun battle with African peacekeepers, police said.}}<\/p>\n
Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack on the heavily fortified compound in Mogadishu, known as Villa Somalia, but the Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was unharmed.<\/p>\n
“President just called me to say he’s unharmed. Attack on Villa Somalia had failed. Sadly some lives lost,” the UN Special Representative Nick Kay wrote on his official Twitter feed.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear how many people were killed.<\/p>\n
In the past few weeks, Mogadishu has been hit by a series of suicide bomb attacks claimed by al-Shabaab, who were pushed out of the city in mid-2011 but have continued to wage a sustained guerrilla campaign.<\/p>\n
Friday’s battle took place at the house of Somalia’s top military commander, General Dahir Aden Indha Qarshe, located in the same compound and near the presidential palace building, Abdikadir Ahmed, a senior police officer, told media.<\/p>\n
{reuters}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Al-Qaeda-linked militants al-Shabaab attacked the Somali presidential palace compound on Friday, blasting through a gate with a car bomb and engaging in a fierce gun battle with African peacekeepers, police said.}} Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack on the heavily fortified compound in Mogadishu, known as Villa Somalia, but the Somali […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000051139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-13347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000051139,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13347.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13347.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13347.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13347.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13347.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13347.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000051139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13347"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=13347"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=13347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}