MOGADISHU Aug 27 (Reuters) – Somali police seized a car laden with explosives in a busy junction of Mogadishu on Saturday, a sign of the unstable security situation despite the withdrawal of Islamist militants from the capital earlier this month.

Police spokesman Abdullahi Barise told Reuters security forces found a four-by-four parked between the strategic, government-controlled K4 junction and Mogadishu airport and said the car bomb could have been detonated remotely by mobile phone.

The al Qaeda-inspired al Shabaab rebels had been waging a four year insurgency against Western-backed government troops and African Union peacekeepers, before retreating from the capital earlier this month, in a move they said was tactical.

Analysts believe the militants will soon re-emerge in the capital as a guerrilla fighting force to carry out high-profile suicide bombings.

The car bomb was found in an area traditionally seen as the safest in the capital, housing several U.N. agency buildings as well as bases for African Union peacekeepers. Al Shabaab had been unable to wrest it from government control.

Barise said he suspected al Shabaab of trying to carry out an attack.

“Fixed inside the car was a mobile phone which al Shabaab usually use as a remote control … perhaps there was also a suicide bomber who got scared and went out of the car,” Barise said.

“(The car) was parked along the road behind Sahafi Hotel. Perhaps they were timing it as a convoy headed for the airport,” he said.

Al Shabaab have launched some high profile attacks in the past. The country’s interior minister was killed by a veiled female suicide bomber in Mogadishu in June and in February a suicide car bomb killed at least 17 people near a police training camp in the capital.

Somalia has been plagued by never-ending cycles of violence since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Western agencies, analysts and nearby neighbours say Somalia is used as a safe haven for Islamist militants intent on attacks beyond the Horn of Africa country.

Thousands of Somalis have been returning to Mogadishu since the Islamist rebels announced their withdrawal, but the capital is still suffering from the effects of years of warfare.

Two children were killed on Saturday after they mistakenly played with a landmine in the Karan district of Mogadishu which al Shabaab had abandoned. Nine people were also wounded, witnesses said. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu; Writing by Yara Bayoumy, editing by Rosalind Russell)

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Reuters

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