Al Shabab terrorists targeted Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in a bomb attack on his motorcade as it was travelling through the capital Mogadishu, the group said.
Government sources said President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was travelling to Hirshabelle state, where the army is reportedly planning a major operation against the Al Shabab group.
"The explosion went off along the road in Hamar-Jajab area, destroying a civilian-populated building," a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"The convoy of the president passed... and we heard a very heavy explosion," witness Nurto Ali said, adding he saw one man buried under rubble.
Two senior government and military officials told Reuters that Mohamud was safe following the attack, and presidential adviser Zakariye Hussein wrote in a post on X that he was "good and well on his way to the front lines."
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Coordinated but failed attack
Soldiers and residents who witnessed the attack confirmed that the president's convoy had been hit.
A Reuters journalist at the scene saw the bodies of four people killed in the assault near the presidential palace.
"Our fighters targeted a convoy of vehicles carrying Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as they were leaving the presidential palace and heading to the airport," Al Shabab said in a statement posted on the al Qaeda-linked group's Telegram channel.
While Al Shabab regularly carries out terror attacks in Somalia as part of its decades-long campaign to topple the government, Tuesday's attack was the first to directly target Mohamud since 2014, during his first term in office, when they bombed a hotel where he was speaking.
Hours after the attack on Tuesday, state media showed images of the president in the Adan Yabal district of Somalia's Middle Shabelle region, where government forces are battling a three-week-old Al Shabab offensive.
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