MOGADISHU: A car bomb targeting senior officials leaving a military base in Mogadishu killed at least 15 people and destroyed a minibus carrying civilians, the Somali military said on Sunday, an attack claim by Islamist al Shabaab militants.

It occurred a week after President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed replaced his security chiefs and called on al Shabaab fighters to surrender within 60 days in return for education and jobs

"At least 15 people, mostly civilians, died in (Sunday's) the blast," Somali Major Hussein Nur told Reuters. "We do not know the exact figure of casualties. All the people on board the ruined minibus perished. Soldiers and other private security guards also died."

A Reuters witness at the scene of the explosion saw a wrecked minibus, human flesh and damage to the tarmac road. Roads were sealed off even to private ambulances.

A government official said given the state of the dead bodies, it would be difficult to give an exact death toll.

"Many people died but we cannot know the exact figure of casualties. We cannot count human flesh," Abdifatah Omar Halane, spokesman for Mogadishu's mayor, told reporters.

Al Shabaab, waging an increasingly deadly campaign of bombings despite losing most of its territory to African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government, was behind the attack, according to Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Qaeda-affiliated group's spokesman for military operations.

Nur said the car bomber appeared intent on hitting a convoy carrying Somali military commander Ahmed Mohamed Jimale and other senior officers, but was not close enough to cause any casualties among his entourage.

Al Shabaab confirmed Jimale was their intended target, and that they had killed seven of his bodyguards in the attack.</s>MOGADISHU, April 9 (Reuters) - A car bomb targeting senior officials leaving a military base in Mogadishu killed at least four people and destroyed a minibus carrying civilians, the Somali military said on Sunday.

Al Shabaab, which is carrying out increasingly deadly bombings despite losing most of its territory to African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government, was behind the attack, Abdiasis Abu Musab, the Islamist militant group's spokesman for military operations said.

A Reuters witness at the scene of the explosion saw a wrecked mini-bus, human flesh and damage to the tarmac road.

"The suicide car bomb was targeting senior military officials but by good luck their car was not hit. Their car turned a minute before the blast," Major Abdikadir Hussein, a military official, told Reuters.

"A mini-bus carrying civilians was also destroyed. We cannot give the exact figure of casualties, but many civilians died in the attack," Hussein added.

Somalia's president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed replaced his security chiefs last week and called on al Shabaab fighters to surrender within 60 days in return for education and jobs (Additional reporting by Abdirahman Hussein; writing by George Obulutsa; editing by Alexander Smith)</s>Police suspected the militants were behind the blast, the latest in a series of frequent attacks in the Somali capital that highlight the challenge the government faces in restoring order to a nation torn apart by two decades of war and chaos.

"We were behind the two explosions at the hotel," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab's military operations spokesman, told Reuters. "We targetted government officials and forces, and killed 15 of them."

A senior police officer said on Friday night at least six people, including four policemen, were killed when a suspected car bomb went off outside the Hotel Maka, a popular meeting place for officials.

He said at the time the death toll could rise because some injuries were serious, but there was no official word of more deaths on Saturday.

Al Shabaab, which was driven out of Mogadishu by an African peacekeeping force in 2011, has said it would keep up its campaign of attacks against the government in the capital.

In September, al Shabaab rebels killed at least 15 people and wounded 23 others in an attack on a popular restaurant using a car bomb and a suicide bomber. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)</s>MOGADISHU: A car bomb targeting senior officials leaving a military base in Mogadishu killed at least 15 people and destroyed a minibus carrying civilians, the Somali military said on Sunday, an attack claim by Islamist al Shabaab militants.

It occurred a week after President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed replaced his security chiefs and called on al Shabaab fighters to surrender within 60 days in return for education and jobs

"At least 15 people, mostly civilians, died in (Sunday's) the blast," Somali Major Hussein Nur told Reuters. "We do not know the exact figure of casualties. All the people on board the ruined minibus perished. Soldiers and other private security guards also died."

A Reuters witness at the scene of the explosion saw a wrecked minibus, human flesh and damage to the tarmac road. Roads were sealed off even to private ambulances.

A government official said given the state of the dead bodies, it would be difficult to give an exact death toll.

"Many people died but we cannot know the exact figure of casualties. We cannot count human flesh," Abdifatah Omar Halane, spokesman for Mogadishu's mayor, told reporters.

Al Shabaab, waging an increasingly deadly campaign of bombings despite losing most of its territory to African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government, was behind the attack, according to Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Qaeda-affiliated group's spokesman for military operations.

Nur said the car bomber appeared intent on hitting a convoy carrying Somali military commander Ahmed Mohamed Jimale and other senior officers, but was not close enough to cause any casualties among his entourage.

Al Shabaab confirmed Jimale was their intended target, and that they had killed seven of his bodyguards in the attack.</s>A car bomb targeting senior officials leaving a military base in Mogadishu killed at least four people and destroyed a minibus carrying civilians, the Somali military said on Sunday.

Al Shabaab, which is carrying out increasingly deadly bombings despite losing most of its territory to African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government, was behind the attack, Abdiasis Abu Musab, the Islamist militant group's spokesman for military operations said.

A Reuters witness at the scene of the explosion saw a wrecked mini-bus, human flesh and damage to the tarmac road.

"The suicide car bomb was targeting senior military officials but by good luck their car was not hit. Their car turned a minute before the blast," Major Abdikadir Hussein, a military official, told Reuters.

"A mini-bus carrying civilians was also destroyed. We cannot give the exact figure of casualties, but many civilians died in the attack," Hussein added.

Somalia's president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed replaced his security chiefs last week and called on al Shabaab fighters to surrender within 60 days in return for education and jobs</s>* Many Shabaab men cite money, not ideology, as motive

* Somali businessmen may be most powerful lever against militants

DUBAI, Sept 26 Al Shabaab emerged as a regional threat funded by millions of dollars from activities ranging from extortion to taxing charcoal exports, but its attack on a Kenyan shopping mall is expected to provoke a counter-terrorism response aimed at crippling the Somali Islamist group's finances.

The money is important to al Shabaab, a group whose aims include the wider imposition of Islamic law but whose ability to attract fighters in one of the poorest countries of the world is based largely on its ability to pay them.

A report by U.N. monitors in July estimated al Shabaab earned more than $25 million a year from illicit exports of charcoal to Gulf Arab states and from taxing the trucking of charcoal to the Somali ports of Kismayu and Barawe.

Other funds come from informal taxes on small businesses in areas of Somalia that al Shabaab controls, and from donations from Somalis overseas, although these transfers are thought to be declining due to a general disenchantment with the increasingly violent group in the diaspora, diplomats say.

A security source in the capital, Mogadishu, said al Shabaab was expert at extorting money from small businesses and at setting up front companies whose income was funnelled to the group. Both sorts of company also acted as informers.

"It's the small little shops where you repair your vehicle, or charge your mobile phone," the source said. "It's a myriad of little businesses, who also help them in their surveillance."

"There's no need for heavy-handed daily enforcement because everyone knows the penalties for non-compliance are drastic," he said, referring to the amputation of limbs or execution.

Suspected additional sources of income include militant Islamists overseas and, according to U.N. sanctions monitors, the nearby state of Eritrea.

The monitors said Eritrea was destabilising Somalia by paying political agents and financing a warlord linked to al Shabaab.

The Eritrean government, accused by its critics of seeking to use Somali territory to undermine Ethiopia, its old enemy, has long denied meddling in Somalia, saying it has no links to al Shabaab's fight against the Somali government.

Al Shabaab has been waging an insurgency since 2007 and formally became part of al Qaeda in 2012. It remains Somalia's most powerful non-government armed group despite being pushed out of Mogadishu by an African Union force in 2011.

Al Shabaab's economic strength is vital to its operations because it can pay its thousands of fighters a monthly salary normally varying between $100 to $300 a month.

That, more than its declared aim of imposing a strict version of Sharia or Islamic law, is the main incentive to join up, Somali researchers say.

Ironically, al Shabaab's income may have benefited from an upturn in the Somali economy that followed the partial restoration of order in Mogadishu over the past two years and a growth in investment amid hopes of an end to years of war.

In the wake of the four-day attack by al Shabaab militants on a Nairobi shopping mall in which at least 72 people were killed, Western counter-terrorism agencies are expected to subject the group's sources of financial support to renewed scrutiny, Somali experts say.

The success of such efforts will depend to a large extent on the choices made by Somalis, in particular the powerful Somali business community in east Africa.

According to Ken Menkhaus, a leading U.S. scholar of al Shabaab, the most formidable weapon against al Shabaab may be the Somalia expatriate business community in Kenya, which has emerged as a force in property and trade in the past 20 years.

Since the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, more than one million Somalis have fled to or through Kenya, and many now have extensive business and real estate investments there.

Fearing a crackdown on Somali firms by a Kenyan government keen to be seen to be doing something, Somali businessmen in Nairobi might now feel compelled to take their own steps against the group, he wrote on the website www.thinkprogress.org.

"Messing with Somali business interests has never advanced the interests of any political actor in Somalia, foreign or local," he said.

It was up to Somalis to "mobilize against Shabaab and take the movement out once and for all by drying up its financial sources, exposing its operatives, and denying the movement any safe space from which to operate."

The alternative, he said, was action by foreign governments, but that would almost certainly impact "innocent Somalis and legitimate Somali businesses in Kenya and around the world, and that is not in anyone's interest except Shabaab's."

Stig Jarle Hansen, a Norwegian expert on the group, told Reuters that what was best known about al Shabaab finances was its system of local taxation in the areas it held, especially the taxation of transport. But verifying this information was difficult and was hampered by hearsay, he said.

In Somalia, a traditional kinship society, research was complicated by the fact that while someone might nominally be in al Shabaab, in reality people were more loyal to their clan elders, he said.

Adam Matan, head of the Anti-Tribalism Movement, an advocacy group that campaigns against the political exploitation of clan identity in Somalia, said al Shabaab fighters told him on his research trips to Somalia that money was a key attraction.

"If you can get a few dollars a month to feed your family, you will take it," said the British-based former Somali refugee, who travels frequently to Somalia, echoing findings in previous Reuters reports about Somali militancy.

Mohamed Aden Hassan, a researcher at Goldsmiths College in London who studies the Somali diaspora, said he believed diaspora funding had all but dried up for al Shabaab in recent years although there were pockets of sympathy "here and there".

Al Shabaab remains in control of most of southern and central Somalia, a U.N. report published in July 2013 said.

According to the report, defectors from al Shabaab said the wage paid to fighters ranged from $100 to $500, "depending upon clan affiliation and seniority".

In September 2012, al-Shabaab fled Kismayu, the main charcoal export outlet to the Gulf, and Kenyan troops in the African Union peacekeeping force took control.

The U.N. Security Council banned the export of charcoal from Somalia in February 2012 to help squeeze al Shabaab's finances.

But shortly after the AU secured the port, Kenyan forces unilaterally lifted the ban, arguing Kismayu's angry charcoal traders could undermine the security of their troops, the U.N. report said. The Kenyan military denied the allegation.

In the months that followed, al Shabaab got back into the trade thanks to ties to local business networks, earning revenues from about a third of the volumes exported.

The charcoal is sold largely to customers in Dubai who sell it on elsewhere in the Gulf, the U.N. report said.

The largest user of the product is Saudi Arabia, according to Farah M. Mohamed, president of the Somali Environment Protection Alliance Network.

He wrote in a June 2013 blog that Saudi Arabia used Somali charcoal primarily for shisha (hookah) pipes, cooking in upscale restaurants and homes, as camping firewood, and as an extra source of heating in the winter.</s>Somalia's new military boss has survived a suspected suicide car bomb attack that has killed at least 15 people, according to police.

General Mohamed Ahmed Jimale, who was recently named new chief of defence forces, was travelling with senior military officials on Sunday when the bomb exploded near Somalia's defence ministry compound in the capital, Mogadishu.

The death toll could rise as a minibus carrying passengers was also destroyed in the blast.

"When we arrived at the scene, we counted bodies of 15 people. Most of them were severed," Mire Aden, a local police chief, told Al Jazeera.

"A number of soldiers are among the dead," he said, adding that Jimale had survived the blast. None of the civilians had survived, Aden said.

Armed group al-Shabab, which has carried out frequent attacks aimed at overthrowing the country's internationally recognised government, has claimed responsibility for the blast.

READ MORE: At least 19 people killed by landmine in Somalia

A huge cloud of smoke billowed over the scene and heavy gunfire was heard in the area.

The wreckage of the civilian minibus was in the street, with a pool of blood under the vehicle. Burning debris littered the area.

Soldiers opened fire in the air to disperse a crowd standing near a car of an electricity company that was destroyed by the powerful blast.

"What happened here was a painful tragedy," said Abdifitah Halane, a spokesman for Mogadishu's mayor, told the Associated Press news agency.

"There is flesh and blood everywhere," he said looking at the destruction caused by the blast.

The latest attack comes days after Somalia's President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed declared a new war against al-Shabab amid a worsening security situation as the group steps up deadly bombings in the capital and elsewhere.

At least 19 passengers of a minibus were killed in a landmine explosion on Thursday, hours after Mohamed instructed the army to prepare for a new offensive against al-Shabab.

The group has denounced Mohamed, who was elected as president in February, as an "apostate" and warned Somalis against supporting him.

Al-Shabab has been pushed out of the capital and other major urban areas in Somalia by national and African Union multinational forces, but it continues to carry out deadly bombings. Targets have included hotels, military checkpoints and the presidential palace.

Abdirizak Mohamud Tuuryare contributed to this report from Mogadishu</s>A car bomb targeting senior officials leaving a military base in Mogadishu killed at least 15 people and destroyed a minibus carrying civilians, the Somali military said on Sunday, an attack claim by Islamist al Shabaab militants.

It occurred a week after President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed replaced his security chiefs and called on al Shabaab fighters to surrender within 60 days in return for education and jobs “At least 15 people, mostly civilians, died in (Sunday’s) the blast,” Somali Major Hussein Nur told Reuters. “We do not know the exact figure of casualties. All the people on board the ruined minibus perished. Soldiers and other private security guards also died.”

A Reuters witness at the scene of the explosion saw a wrecked minibus, human flesh and damage to the tarmac road. Roads were sealed off even to private ambulances.

A government official said given the state of the dead bodies, it would be difficult to give an exact death toll.

“Many people died but we cannot know the exact figure of casualties. We cannot count human flesh,” Abdifatah Omar Halane, spokesman for Mogadishu’s mayor, told reporters.

Al Shabaab, waging an increasingly deadly campaign of bombings despite losing most of its territory to African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government, was behind the attack, according to Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Qaeda-affiliated group’s spokesman for military operations.

Nur said the car bomber appeared intent on hitting a convoy carrying Somali military commander Ahmed Mohamed Jimale and other senior officers, but was not close enough to cause any casualties among his entourage.

Al Shabaab confirmed Jimale was their intended target, and that they had killed seven of his bodyguards in the attack.</s>Police suspected the militants were behind the blast, the latest in a series of frequent attacks in the Somali capital that highlight the challenge the government faces in restoring order to a nation torn apart by two decades of war and chaos.

"We were behind the two explosions at the hotel," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab's military operations spokesman, told Reuters. "We targetted government officials and forces, and killed 15 of them."

A senior police officer said on Friday night at least six people, including four policemen, were killed when a suspected car bomb went off outside the Hotel Maka, a popular meeting place for officials.

He said at the time the death toll could rise because some injuries were serious, but there was no official word of more deaths on Saturday.

Al Shabaab, which was driven out of Mogadishu by an African peacekeeping force in 2011, has said it would keep up its campaign of attacks against the government in the capital.

In September, al Shabaab rebels killed at least 15 people and wounded 23 others in an attack on a popular restaurant using a car bomb and a suicide bomber. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)</s>MOGADISHU, April 9 (Reuters) - At least four people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside a military base in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on Sunday, including some in a van that was destroyed, military officials said.

The car bomb targeted senior officials leaving the base in a convoy, they said. The Islamist group al Shabaab was behind the attack, said Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab's spokesman for military operations.

"The suicide car bomb was targeting senior military officials but by good luck their car was not hit. Their car turned a minute before the blast," Major Abdikadir Hussein, a military official, told Reuters.

"A mini-bus carrying civilians was also destroyed. We cannot give the exact figure of casualties, but many civilians died in the attack. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Larry King)
A car bomb explodes outside the Ministry of Defence in Mogadishu, killing at least 15 people. Al-Shabaab claims responsibility for the attack.