MOGADISHU: A bomb exploded outside the headquarters of Somalia’s biggest bank and money transfer agency yesterday, wounding at least two people hours after Al Qaeda-linked militants ordered the company to cease operations in areas under its control.
Police said they were still searching the rubble outside Dahabshiil’s office in the capital Mogadishu. Its doors were shattered by the blast but it was not immediately clear whether anyone had been killed.
“A remote-controlled bomb planted in front of Mogadishu’s Dahabshiil bank and money transfer headquarters injured two guards,” police captain Nur Hassan said.
Money transfer agencies like Dahabshiil have become increasingly important to the Horn of Africa country’s fractured economy, which lacks a developed banking sector after 20 years of civil conflict.
Earlier, members of Somalia’s al Shabaab Islamist group walked into Dahabshiil branches in the country and demanded they close, accusing the company of working for aid agencies banned from territories they govern, according to a statement on the movement’s website www.somaliamemo.net.
Two engineers killed in Iraq gas field attack
FALLUJAH: Gunmen killed two Iraqi engineers, wounded a third and kidnapped another in an attack on a camp near a gas field run by a South Korean firm in Iraq’s western desert, officials said yesterday.
The attack on the camp, for workers contracted by KOGAS to work on the Akkaz field, occurred at around 10pm (1900 GMT) on Monday, according to Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Al Khafaji, the chief of police in the town of Qaim on the Iraq-Syria border. Mustafa Shawqi, a doctor at Qaim’s hospital, confirmed the casualty toll.
Iraqi officials have often expressed concerns over growing instability along Iraq’s border with conflict-hit Syria, with concerns rife over reports of the increased presence of Sunni militants linked to Al Qaeda on both sides of the frontier.
The Akkaz gas field, with estimated reserves of 158.6 billion cubic metres, was discovered in 1992. In November 2010, Baghdad awarded the development project to a joint bid from Kazakhstan’s KazMunaiGas and theKOGAS but the Kazakh firm pulled out later.
Agencies
