Al-Shebab attack Mogadishu court house, Turkish aid convoy

Twenty-nine people were killed and others wounded after nine suicide bombers attacked Mogadishu’s law court on Sunday. A car bomb near the airport killed five more people.

Reuters/Feisal Omar

A big blast was heard before the suicide bombers stormed Mogadishu’s law court. Then the group, who were dressed in army uniforms, managed to enter the complex while court was in session, firing a barrage of bullets during a running gunbattle with security forces that lasted almost three hours.

Among the dead were two famous lawyers who were caught in the crossfire.

The two lawyers were Mohamed Mohamud Afrah and Abdikarin Hassan, who recently defended a journalist who stood trial after interviewing a rape victim.

The nine suicide bombers blew themselves up after they ran out of ammunition.

The Islamist militant group al-Shebab says it carried out the attack.

Somalia president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud strongly condemned the attack, saying that such violence was nothing but a sign of "desperation" by the "terrorists", who had lost all their strongholds and were in decline right across Somalia.

In a separate incident, five people were killed when a remote-detonated car bomb near the airport struck a convoy carrying Turkish aid.

These attacks were the worst in Mogadishu since al-Shebab militants were forced out of the capital in August 2011.