Remember, jihad is an interior spiritual struggle. This one just happens to be in the interior of the Mogadishu police headquarters now.
Somalia Jihad Update. “Armed Somali Insurgents Seize Police Headquarters in Mogadishu,” from the Associated Press, May 8:
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Firing rocket-propelled grenades and heavy submachine guns, Islamist fighters seized the police headquarters at the heart of the government’s stronghold in Mogadishu on Thursday in a bold attack that witnesses said killed two soldiers and two policemen.
The insurgents have tried many times to attack the heavily guarded K4 district but Thursday’s raid was their first major success. The ambush could not be immediately be verified by Somali officials. It came a day after a bloody Wednesday in the Horn of Africa nation. Insurgents attacked Ethiopian military convoys in two rural areas, and the soldiers responded by opening fire on civilians in both towns, killing at least 17 villagers total, according to witness accounts.
It wasn’t known how many Ethiopians died in that fighting and the witness accounts could not be verified. Ethiopia, which sent troops into Somalia last year to back up soldiers fighting Islamic insurgents, does not make public its troops’ fatalities but the insurgents said one of their regional commanders was killed.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb killed three Somali soldiers Wednesday, a military officer said. A separate attack on a World Food Program convoy in central Somalia killed a driver, U.N. officials said.
In the Mogadishu attack Thursday, witnesses said an explosion rocked Makalal Mukrama Road outside police headquarters in K4 district, sending plumes of black smoke into the night air after fighters set ablaze a captured “technical” — a pickup truck with a submachine gun fixed to its bed. The blast came after the insurgents seized the police station yelling “God is great,” witnesses said.