{Local government headquarters and emergency responders targeted in Galkayo, leaving at least 20 people dead.}<\/p>\n
At least 20 people have been killed and several others wounded in twin suicide blasts in the central Somali town of Galkayo, according to a Somali health official.<\/p>\n
The first vehicle explosion on Sunday targeted the local government headquarters; the second targeted emergency services at the scene of the first blast.<\/p>\n
“There were two huge bombs. The first one was a truck bomb, followed a minute or so [later] by another car bomb. My brother was injured at the scene,” Halima Ismail, a local resident, told Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n
Authorities initially put the death toll at 13, including civilians and security forces personnel, but a medical official said that number had risen.<\/p>\n
“Death toll is over 20 and it may rise further,” said Ahmed Sugule, a doctor at Galkayo hospital. He said another 30 people were wounded in the attack.<\/p>\n
Al-Shabab, the armed group fighting to overthrow the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu, claimed responsibility for the blasts.<\/p>\n
The UN mission in Somalia condemned Sunday’s explosions. “Terrorist attacks will not stop 2016 electoral process,” UNSOM said via its Twitter account.<\/p>\n
Somalia is scheduled to hold elections later this year.<\/p>\n
The attack in Galkayo comes just days after Somali security services captured a wanted al-Shabab commander there.<\/p>\n
US-trained commandos called Danab arrested Abdulah al-Sudani and four other suspected fighters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Local government headquarters and emergency responders targeted in Galkayo, leaving at least 20 people dead.} At least 20 people have been killed and several others wounded in twin suicide blasts in the central Somali town of Galkayo, according to a Somali health official. The first vehicle explosion on Sunday targeted the local government headquarters; the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","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":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","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":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27944","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27944"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27944"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}