Al Shabaab attack on Lido beach on Friday leaves 37 dead and 247 injured

The government announces the arrest of several security officials after the bloodiest attack in the last two years in the country

Aug. 4 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Somalia’s Health Minister Ali Haji Adan on Sunday raised the death toll from Friday’s attack by Al Shabaab jihadists on Lido beach in the capital Mogadishu to 37 dead and 247 wounded, eleven of them critical, in what is already the worst attack in the last two years in the country.

Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre has condemned this “barbaric” attack and announced the arrest of several police officers and army officials for negligence in preventing the attack that occurred in the evening in front of the Beach View hotel.

“We have taken urgent measures to hold each other accountable. Many suspects, including officers, have been arrested and are being investigated. I hope we will take strong security measures,” the president said after visiting survivors admitted to Erdogan hospital, in comments reported by the Goobjoog website.

The attack began at around 7.30pm on Friday with the explosion of a bomb detonated by a suicide bomber. Five other jihadists began to open fire indiscriminately on the crowd seconds later. All the attackers were killed by security forces after a shootout that lasted until the early hours of the morning. By then Al Shabaab had already claimed responsibility for the attack in its propaganda media while the police managed to defuse a car bomb in the vicinity.

Somalia has in recent months stepped up offensives against Al Shabaab with the support of clans and local militias as part of a series of decisions taken by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who promised upon taking office in May 2022 to put the fight against terrorism at the heart of his efforts to stabilise the African country.

However, attacks on government institutions and hotels and restaurants continue to occur in Mogadishu, where Islamists believe a Western way of life prevails. In July, 11 people were killed in a terrorist attack on a restaurant during the European Football Championship final.

Al Shabaab’s attacks on Lido beach are almost cyclical. A suicide car bombing and a shooting attack killed more than 20 people in January 2016. Four years later, another similar attack left at least eleven dead. In 2023, Al Shabaab killed six civilians and three soldiers in the same location in the capital.

The latest toll makes Friday’s attack on Lido beach the deadliest in Somalia since October 2002, when two car bombs exploded simultaneously at a roundabout in the capital, killing at least 100 people and wounding 300. The organization’s most devastating attack, however, occurred in October 2017, when at least 587 people were killed and more than 300 injured when two truck bombs exploded at a busy commercial intersection in the capital.