Ethiopia: Al-Shabaab Takes 'Last Gasps' in Ethiopia
The explosion went off at 2:40 on a Sunday afternoon,
on a tree-lined side street in Ethiopia's capital city of Addis Ababa.
The area was a quiet one - home to foreign diplomats, domestic civil
servants and several embassies - and the blast was strong enough to kill
two men, startle the neighbours, and demolish a small home.
But if the government's current theory is correct, the carnage could have been much worse.
Sunday, Oct. 13, was the day of a big football match - a rare shot at the World Cup playoffs for Ethiopia, which ultimately lost against Nigeria in Addis Ababa. Given the debris found at the site of the explosion, including suicide belts and an Ethiopian team jersey, investigators think the men may have been planning to detonate near the football stadium in central Addis, where thousands of fans and security workers had gathered.
But something went wrong, and the two suspects - Somali nationals, according to the government - never made it out of the house before their explosives went off.
Al-Shabaab, a militant group based in Somalia, claimed responsibility for the attack on its Twitter account, but its details were off. "We Claim Responsibility for Today's Bomb Blast in #AddisAbaba, #Ethiopia, that Left Nearly 10 Kuffar [disbelievers] Dead," said the Monday tweet, which greatly exaggerated the number of casualties and was not posted until the day after the actual explosion.
"It is a plausible assumption that Al-Shabaab may be connected to the crime," Kjetil Tronvoll, an Ethiopia expert and senior partner at the International Law and Policy Institute, told IPS, noting that Al-Shabaab has repeatedly denounced Ethiopia and threatened to carry out attacks.
"Ethiopia has a standing high-alert security vis-a-vis Somalia," he added. "[The recent explosion] gives justification to such alertness."
The Ethiopian government is adamant about clamping down on extremism in all its forms, said Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn at a press conference this month. "Extremism often degenerates into terrorism, so we have to fight extremism as much as we can, and that has no compromise at all." This approach has garnered criticism from some Ethiopian Muslims - including ethnic Somalis - who claim their communities are unfairly targeted.
"The terrorist incident, if connected to Al-Shabaab, may sadly contribute to a possible stigmatisation of the Somali population at large in Ethiopia," said Tronvoll.
The Ethiopian government said it would not change its approach to national security on its own soil, and would focus instead on its borders, since the two suspects in the Sunday explosion arrived illegally.
Sunday, Oct. 13, was the day of a big football match - a rare shot at the World Cup playoffs for Ethiopia, which ultimately lost against Nigeria in Addis Ababa. Given the debris found at the site of the explosion, including suicide belts and an Ethiopian team jersey, investigators think the men may have been planning to detonate near the football stadium in central Addis, where thousands of fans and security workers had gathered.
But something went wrong, and the two suspects - Somali nationals, according to the government - never made it out of the house before their explosives went off.
Al-Shabaab, a militant group based in Somalia, claimed responsibility for the attack on its Twitter account, but its details were off. "We Claim Responsibility for Today's Bomb Blast in #AddisAbaba, #Ethiopia, that Left Nearly 10 Kuffar [disbelievers] Dead," said the Monday tweet, which greatly exaggerated the number of casualties and was not posted until the day after the actual explosion.
"It is a plausible assumption that Al-Shabaab may be connected to the crime," Kjetil Tronvoll, an Ethiopia expert and senior partner at the International Law and Policy Institute, told IPS, noting that Al-Shabaab has repeatedly denounced Ethiopia and threatened to carry out attacks.
"Ethiopia has a standing high-alert security vis-a-vis Somalia," he added. "[The recent explosion] gives justification to such alertness."
The Ethiopian government is adamant about clamping down on extremism in all its forms, said Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn at a press conference this month. "Extremism often degenerates into terrorism, so we have to fight extremism as much as we can, and that has no compromise at all." This approach has garnered criticism from some Ethiopian Muslims - including ethnic Somalis - who claim their communities are unfairly targeted.
"The terrorist incident, if connected to Al-Shabaab, may sadly contribute to a possible stigmatisation of the Somali population at large in Ethiopia," said Tronvoll.
The Ethiopian government said it would not change its approach to national security on its own soil, and would focus instead on its borders, since the two suspects in the Sunday explosion arrived illegally.
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