Africa – (14 May 17) West Africa weighs options in the face of a surge in militant attacks: West African nations, facing a growing threat from Islamist militants, are set to deploy a military force to augment the 15,000-strong UN peace-keeping force which, so far, has failed to deal effectively with the insurgency. The Spokesman-Review reports that militants gave been attacking not only UN peacekeepers in Mali, but have expanded their area of operations beyond Mali’s borders. The growing wave of attacks has led the G5 Sahel group – a recently formed alliance of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mauritania — to agree to assemble a 4,000-strong force by the end of the year. Malian Defence Minister Tiena Coulibaly announced the establishment of the new force last week. “The frequency of attacks is certainly increasing in both Mali and northern Burkina Faso,” Sean Smith, a West Africa analyst at risk analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft, said by phone from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital. “The good thing is that the countries are cooperating better than they’ve ever cooperated before, but the reality is that the number of attacks has risen every year since 2013 and there’s no sign of them abating.” Violence gripped Mali in 2012, when Tuareg separatists joined forces with al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist group Anser Dine to establish the independent Republic of Azawad in north Mali. France sent an expeditionary force in Jan 13, and the Islamists were defeated, allowing the reunification of Mali. The remnants of Anser Dine have since engaged in deadly hit-and-run attacks and bombings. The Mali government and regional states, in an effort to separate the Tuareg from the Islamists, have agreed on several peace deals granting a degree of autonomy to the Tuareg, but the Islamists have pressed on with their campaign of terror, vowing to persist until all foreign troops leave West Africa. “The terrorists want to create permanent insecurity,” Coulibaly said last week. “Their business is well coordinated, well thought out. I don’t think the attacks are planned only when the opportunity presents itself: they’re calculated to undermine the morale of our troops.” To aid the Mali army keep security in the country – and to prevent the Islamists from expanding their terrorist campaign to neighboring countries — the UN has deployed more than 10,000 soldiers to the region. The main task of that force has been to help Mali restore its authority over the restive north, while a mobile French military force, aided by considerable air power, moves across the vast, but largely unpopulated region to hunt down Islamist militants. Coulibaly noted that the UN Security Council has so far refused Mali’s request to give the peacekeeping mission a “more robust” mandate. Coulibaly said that to be effective, the UN force, like the French, should be able to engage in combat with militants. “They need helicopters, they need armoured vehicles and they need a mandate to fight terrorism,” he said. Yvan Guichaoua, a lecturer in international conflict at the University of Kent in England, told Bloomberg that viewing the conflict in Mali solely from a military perspective is a mistake. “The Malian crisis has the characteristics of a civil war; most jihadist fighters are Malians,” he said. “If there is no substantial effort from the administration to try to restore some kind of legitimate authority, the fight against terrorism will be counterproductive.” The militants’ campaign in Mali has become increasingly more deadly, and more destructive. In addition to ambushing and killing small groups of Mali soldiers, the militants have begun to use suicide trucks to kill large number of people. The UN says that its peacekeeping mission in Mali has the highest rate of dead and injured soldiers of all current UN operations around the world. The Mauritanian news agency al-Akhbar reported in Mar 17 that four militant groups – including Anser Dine — merged into one organization called the Support Group for Islam and Muslims. The new group is led by a Tuareg chief from Mali. The violence spilled over into Burkina Faso earlier this year, where militants on motorbikes have attacked several border posts near Mali. In March, Niger declared a state of emergency in two western regions near Mali following a series of cross-border raids that killed more than twenty Nigerien soldiers. The International Crisis Group, in a letter to members of the Security Council, said that it is not clear what the benefits would be of introducing a new West African force into the mix, given that the threats are “complex” and that the UN is already struggling to contain the violence. “Their deployment risks aggravating what amounts to a security traffic jam,” the Brussels-based research group said. “Militants are capitalizing on local disputes and the state’s absence and lack of legitimacy” (see “ICG’s open letter to the UN Security Council on peacekeeping in Mali”).
Egypt/Hasm, Muslim Brotherhood – Egyptian security forces managed to capture an extremist cell belonging to the Hasm movement with links to the Muslim Brotherhood, including members who were involved in the Nasr City incident which killed three policemen it was reported on the 25 May 17. The Egyptian interior said that were able to arrest the extremists and identify the group’s officials and those responsible for the recruitment, training and financing, as well as the planning and implementation of terror operations targeting the components of the state and its security apparatus. According to the investigation, nine members of the Muslim Brotherhood organization carried out the attack in Nasr City earlier this month. The militants drove by and shot at police stationed at an intersection of the ring road, a busy Cairo expressway, in the city's eastern neighbourhood of Nasr City. Hasm, a group that the government has tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on its official website. The Brotherhood, outlawed by the government in 2013, maintains that it is a peaceful organization. Little is publicly known about Hasm, though it has claimed a handful of attacks over the past year including an attempt on the life of the former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa.
Egypt – Masked gunmen attacked a bus carrying Coptic Christians on a visit to a monastery south of the Egyptian capital on the 26 May 17 killing at least 26 people, officials said. The assailants sprayed the bus headed for Saint Samuel monastery in Minya province with gunfire before fleeing, provincial governor Essam el-Bedawi told state television. "They used automatic weapons," he said. Health ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed told state television that 26 people were killed and another 25 wounded. Bedawi said police were deploying along the road where the attack took place and had set up checkpoints. The shooting followed church bombings in Dec 16 and Apr 17claimed by the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group that killed dozens of Copts. The jihadists threatened more attacks against the Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 90-million population. Friday's shooting came after a historic visit to Egypt by Roman Catholic Pope Francis to show solidarity with the country's Christians. Egypt says it has identified those behind the church bombings, saying they were part of an extremist cell based in southern provinces, offering a reward for their capture. Sisi has defended the performance of his security forces and accused jihadists of trying to divide Egyptian society by attacking vulnerable minorities.
Follow-on Report: Egypt launched six air strikes on jihadist camps in Libya on the 26 May 17 after masked gunmen attacked a bus of Coptic Christians south of the Egyptian capital, killing at least 28 people. Assailants in three pick-up trucks attacked the bus as it was heading for the Saint Samuel monastery in Minya province, more than 200 kilometres (120 miles) from Cairo, before fleeing, the interior ministry said. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in a televised address, said Egyptian forces had hit a jihadist training camp in retaliation. State television reported six air strikes against "terror camps in Libya", specifying that jihadist training camps were hit in the eastern Libyan city of Derna. Witnesses there reported four strikes by a single aircraft. "Egypt will not hesitate in striking terror camps anywhere, either inside (the country) or outside it," Sisi said. A spokesman for the pro-Al-Qaeda Majlis Mujahedeen Derna, which controls the city, said the Egyptian air force carried out eight raids on the city without causing casualties. Addressing US President Donald Trump, Sisi said: "You have said that your priority is to confront terrorism, and I trust you are capable of doing that." In a statement released in Washington, Trump said: "The bloodletting of Christians must end, and all who aid their killers must be punished." "Terrorists are engaged in a war against civilisation, and it is up to all who value life to confront and defeat this evil." No group has yet claimed responsibility for attacking the bus.
Follow-on Report (27 May 17): Egypt said on the 27 May 17 attackers who massacred Christians near a monastery had trained in militant camps in Libya which it targeted with air strikes, after the Islamic State group claimed responsibility. The air force loyal to Egypt-backed Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar said it had joined the Egyptian air strikes on the 26 May 17 following the attack on Copts that killed 29 people. But the only confirmed strikes appear to have hit a pro-Al-Qaeda group in the Libyan city of Derna that has fought against ISIS. ISIS said on Saturday that its fighters had ambushed the Christians as they were travelling to the Saint Samuel monastery in Egypt’s southern province of Minya.
Ivory Coast – Soldiers who staged a nationwide mutiny in Ivory Coast have reached an agreement with the government on bonus payments and have agreed to return to barracks, ending a revolt that paralysed cities and towns across the country for four days. Two spokesmen for the mutinous troops said on the 16 May 17 that their financial demands had been met. "We accept the government's proposal ... We are returning to barracks now," Sergeant Seydou Kone told Reuters news agency on the 16 May 17. Soldiers in Bouake, the epicentre of the uprising and Ivory Coast's second largest city, have withdrawn into their bases, and cocoa exporters in the economic capital of Abidjan resumed business after a one-day closure. "We've just handed back control of the entrances to the city [Bouake] to the police and gendarmes this morning, and we're returning to our barracks," another spokesman for the group said. Residents in towns across the country affected by the mutiny said that calm had largely returned and that banks and stores had reopened. According to spokesmen, the proposal accepted by the soldiers means 8,400 will receive an immediate bonus payment of 5m CFA francs ($8,400). Another 2m francs will then be paid at the end of next month.
Kenya/al-Shabaab – At least three Kenyan police officers have been killed when their vehicle hit a landmine near the country's eastern border with Somalia, according to a senior official on the 24 May 17. The officers were part of a three-vehicle early morning patrol heading to the border town of Liboi when their truck hit an improvised explosive device (IED), North Eastern regional commissioner Mohamud Ali Saleh said. Somalia's al-Shabaab armed group claimed responsibility for the attack. "We destroyed the police car. Some died and others were injured," Abdiasis Abu Musab, al-Shabab's military spokesperson said. The Kenyan Red Cross said on Twitter eight officers had been wounded. The latest attack came just a day after Joseph Bionnet, inspector general of police, warned that some members of the armed group had sneaked into Kenya and were planning attacks. "The militants have found it difficult to carry out attacks as they used to because all the entry points along the border have been closed. They have now resorted to planting IEDs at selected roads just to target our security officers," Saleh said.
Libya – An attack on an airbase in southern Libya has killed at least 141 people, mostly soldiers loyal to military leader Khalifa Haftar's self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (LNA), a spokesman for his forces said. LNA's Ahmad al-Mismari said on the 19 May 17 that members of a militia loyal to the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli had carried out summary executions during the assault. The victims also included civilians who worked at the Brak al-Shati airbase or were in the nearby area, he said. "The soldiers were returning from a military parade. They weren't armed. Most of them were executed," he said. The GNA denied ordering the attack, which it condemned. It set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the attack late on on the 19 May 17 and suspended defence minister, Mahdi al-Barghathi, pending an outcome of the investigation. Jamal al-Treiki, the head of GNA's Third Force militia, accused of carrying out the attack, was also suspended. The LNA does not recognise the authority of the GNA, and instead supports rival authorities based in the east. It has promised a "strong" response to the attack. Martin Kobler, the UN envoy to Libya, has voiced "outrage" at reports of fatalities. He suggested that if the reports were true, the "unprovoked attack" could amount to war crimes and may be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. Aguila Saleh, the speaker of the eastern-based parliament, accused the GNA's Third Force of a "serious breach" of a truce agreement reached between Haftar and unity government head Fayez al-Sarraj in Abu Dhabi on May 2. Following the reconciliation talks, both men said they had agreed to put an end to violence in southern Libya, where tribes and militias vie for control of lucrative smuggling routes with neighbouring Chad, Niger and Sudan. Saleh said he has ordered the armed forces "to take the measures necessary to respond to the assault and defend the south and cleanse it of all outlaw militias". His comments prompted alarm in Tripoli, with the GNA calling for an immediate ceasefire in the south.
Libya/Ansar al-Sharia – The Libyan jihadist group Ansar al-Sharia, which is linked to Al-Qaeda and deemed a terrorist organisation by the UN and United States, announced its "dissolution" in a communique published online on the 27 May 17. Washington accuses the group of being behind the 11 Sep 12 attack on the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi in which ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. Ansar al-Sharia is one of the jihadist groups that sprung up in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, in the chaos following the death of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. They overran the city in 2014. East Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar earlier this month launched an offensive to oust jihadist fighters from their two remaining strongholds in Benghazi. In its communiqué Ansar al-Sharia said it had been "weakened" by the fighting. The group lost its leader, Mohammed Azahawi, in clashes with Haftar's forces in Benghazi at the end of 2014. Most of its members then defected to the so-called Islamic State group. Ansar al-Sharia later joined the Revolutionary Shura Council of Benghazi, a local alliance of Islamist militias. At its zenith, Ansar al-Sharia was present in Benghazi and Derna in eastern Syria, with offshoots in Sirte and Sabratha, western Libya. The organisation took over barracks and other sites abandoned by the ousted Kadhafi forces and transformed them into training grounds for hundreds of jihadists seeking to head to Iraq or Syria.
Somalia/Da’esh – The Islamic State group has claimed its first suicide attack in Somalia that left five dead as it steps up activities in a region dominated by the Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab. The group's self-styled news agency Amaq claimed the "martyrdom-seeking operation with an explosive vest" in a statement carried by the SITE Intelligence Group which noted it was the first suicide bombing by the militants in Somalia. The suicide bomber detonated his explosives vest at a checkpoint in the north-eastern port city of Bosaso late on the 23 May 17 situated in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland. "Security forces stopped the suspect when he approached but he detonated himself leaving five people dead. One of the security officers and four civilians were killed in the blast," said local police official Mohamed Dahir Adan. The blast occurred near a hotel often used as a meeting place for local officials, witnesses said. "I think the bomber was trying to target the hotel but he was stopped at the checkpoint close to the hotel and he decided to detonate his explosives," said witness Awke Mohamed. The region has often come under attack by Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab militants and is also home to a breakaway group of fighters who have declared allegiance to IS. However the group has so far failed to gather much support while the Shabaab has taking pains to purge those expressing pro-IS sentiment from their ranks. The militants are led by former Shabaab cleric Abdiqadir Mumin who switched allegiance from Al-Qaeda to IS in Oct 15 and was named a "global terrorist" by the US State Department in August. Aside from issuing occasional promotional videos, the group seized the small fishing town of Qandala before being ousted by Puntland forces in Dec 16. Then in Feb 17 IS claimed an attack by gunmen on a hotel in Bosaso which left four security guards dead. Rashid Abdi of the International Crisis Group, said that while Mumin's group was stepping up its activities, the Shabaab remained the biggest threat in the region. Mumin was born in Puntland and lived in Sweden before moving to the UK in the 2000s, where he was granted British citizenship. In London and Leicester, he developed a reputation as a firebrand preacher at extremist mosques and in videos posted online. Monitored by MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, Mumin is thought to have known Mohamed Emwazi, the IS executioner nicknamed 'Jihadi John', and Michael Adebolajo, one of two people convicted over the 2013 murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in London. In 2010, Mumin travelled to Somalia to join the Shabaab, which both Emwazi and Adebolajo had unsuccessfully tried to do. He initially served as an imam and propagandist before taking control of the Puntland faction of the Shabaab and later defecting to IS with a handful of fighters despite lacking battlefield experience. Observers say his supporters are mostly made up of members of his own Majerteen clan, and the very existence of Mumin's group is attributed to complex local clan rivalries. The International Crisis Group estimated in Nov 16 that his group counted some 200 members and warned the threat of IS could not be "dismissed as insignificant". The group called for a "genuine political initiative to address local clan grievances".
Egypt/Hasm, Muslim Brotherhood – Egyptian security forces managed to capture an extremist cell belonging to the Hasm movement with links to the Muslim Brotherhood, including members who were involved in the Nasr City incident which killed three policemen it was reported on the 25 May 17. The Egyptian interior said that were able to arrest the extremists and identify the group’s officials and those responsible for the recruitment, training and financing, as well as the planning and implementation of terror operations targeting the components of the state and its security apparatus. According to the investigation, nine members of the Muslim Brotherhood organization carried out the attack in Nasr City earlier this month. The militants drove by and shot at police stationed at an intersection of the ring road, a busy Cairo expressway, in the city's eastern neighbourhood of Nasr City. Hasm, a group that the government has tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on its official website. The Brotherhood, outlawed by the government in 2013, maintains that it is a peaceful organization. Little is publicly known about Hasm, though it has claimed a handful of attacks over the past year including an attempt on the life of the former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa.
Egypt – Masked gunmen attacked a bus carrying Coptic Christians on a visit to a monastery south of the Egyptian capital on the 26 May 17 killing at least 26 people, officials said. The assailants sprayed the bus headed for Saint Samuel monastery in Minya province with gunfire before fleeing, provincial governor Essam el-Bedawi told state television. "They used automatic weapons," he said. Health ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed told state television that 26 people were killed and another 25 wounded. Bedawi said police were deploying along the road where the attack took place and had set up checkpoints. The shooting followed church bombings in Dec 16 and Apr 17claimed by the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group that killed dozens of Copts. The jihadists threatened more attacks against the Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 90-million population. Friday's shooting came after a historic visit to Egypt by Roman Catholic Pope Francis to show solidarity with the country's Christians. Egypt says it has identified those behind the church bombings, saying they were part of an extremist cell based in southern provinces, offering a reward for their capture. Sisi has defended the performance of his security forces and accused jihadists of trying to divide Egyptian society by attacking vulnerable minorities.
Follow-on Report: Egypt launched six air strikes on jihadist camps in Libya on the 26 May 17 after masked gunmen attacked a bus of Coptic Christians south of the Egyptian capital, killing at least 28 people. Assailants in three pick-up trucks attacked the bus as it was heading for the Saint Samuel monastery in Minya province, more than 200 kilometres (120 miles) from Cairo, before fleeing, the interior ministry said. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in a televised address, said Egyptian forces had hit a jihadist training camp in retaliation. State television reported six air strikes against "terror camps in Libya", specifying that jihadist training camps were hit in the eastern Libyan city of Derna. Witnesses there reported four strikes by a single aircraft. "Egypt will not hesitate in striking terror camps anywhere, either inside (the country) or outside it," Sisi said. A spokesman for the pro-Al-Qaeda Majlis Mujahedeen Derna, which controls the city, said the Egyptian air force carried out eight raids on the city without causing casualties. Addressing US President Donald Trump, Sisi said: "You have said that your priority is to confront terrorism, and I trust you are capable of doing that." In a statement released in Washington, Trump said: "The bloodletting of Christians must end, and all who aid their killers must be punished." "Terrorists are engaged in a war against civilisation, and it is up to all who value life to confront and defeat this evil." No group has yet claimed responsibility for attacking the bus.
Follow-on Report (27 May 17): Egypt said on the 27 May 17 attackers who massacred Christians near a monastery had trained in militant camps in Libya which it targeted with air strikes, after the Islamic State group claimed responsibility. The air force loyal to Egypt-backed Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar said it had joined the Egyptian air strikes on the 26 May 17 following the attack on Copts that killed 29 people. But the only confirmed strikes appear to have hit a pro-Al-Qaeda group in the Libyan city of Derna that has fought against ISIS. ISIS said on Saturday that its fighters had ambushed the Christians as they were travelling to the Saint Samuel monastery in Egypt’s southern province of Minya.
Ivory Coast – Soldiers who staged a nationwide mutiny in Ivory Coast have reached an agreement with the government on bonus payments and have agreed to return to barracks, ending a revolt that paralysed cities and towns across the country for four days. Two spokesmen for the mutinous troops said on the 16 May 17 that their financial demands had been met. "We accept the government's proposal ... We are returning to barracks now," Sergeant Seydou Kone told Reuters news agency on the 16 May 17. Soldiers in Bouake, the epicentre of the uprising and Ivory Coast's second largest city, have withdrawn into their bases, and cocoa exporters in the economic capital of Abidjan resumed business after a one-day closure. "We've just handed back control of the entrances to the city [Bouake] to the police and gendarmes this morning, and we're returning to our barracks," another spokesman for the group said. Residents in towns across the country affected by the mutiny said that calm had largely returned and that banks and stores had reopened. According to spokesmen, the proposal accepted by the soldiers means 8,400 will receive an immediate bonus payment of 5m CFA francs ($8,400). Another 2m francs will then be paid at the end of next month.
Kenya/al-Shabaab – At least three Kenyan police officers have been killed when their vehicle hit a landmine near the country's eastern border with Somalia, according to a senior official on the 24 May 17. The officers were part of a three-vehicle early morning patrol heading to the border town of Liboi when their truck hit an improvised explosive device (IED), North Eastern regional commissioner Mohamud Ali Saleh said. Somalia's al-Shabaab armed group claimed responsibility for the attack. "We destroyed the police car. Some died and others were injured," Abdiasis Abu Musab, al-Shabab's military spokesperson said. The Kenyan Red Cross said on Twitter eight officers had been wounded. The latest attack came just a day after Joseph Bionnet, inspector general of police, warned that some members of the armed group had sneaked into Kenya and were planning attacks. "The militants have found it difficult to carry out attacks as they used to because all the entry points along the border have been closed. They have now resorted to planting IEDs at selected roads just to target our security officers," Saleh said.
Libya – An attack on an airbase in southern Libya has killed at least 141 people, mostly soldiers loyal to military leader Khalifa Haftar's self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (LNA), a spokesman for his forces said. LNA's Ahmad al-Mismari said on the 19 May 17 that members of a militia loyal to the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli had carried out summary executions during the assault. The victims also included civilians who worked at the Brak al-Shati airbase or were in the nearby area, he said. "The soldiers were returning from a military parade. They weren't armed. Most of them were executed," he said. The GNA denied ordering the attack, which it condemned. It set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the attack late on on the 19 May 17 and suspended defence minister, Mahdi al-Barghathi, pending an outcome of the investigation. Jamal al-Treiki, the head of GNA's Third Force militia, accused of carrying out the attack, was also suspended. The LNA does not recognise the authority of the GNA, and instead supports rival authorities based in the east. It has promised a "strong" response to the attack. Martin Kobler, the UN envoy to Libya, has voiced "outrage" at reports of fatalities. He suggested that if the reports were true, the "unprovoked attack" could amount to war crimes and may be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. Aguila Saleh, the speaker of the eastern-based parliament, accused the GNA's Third Force of a "serious breach" of a truce agreement reached between Haftar and unity government head Fayez al-Sarraj in Abu Dhabi on May 2. Following the reconciliation talks, both men said they had agreed to put an end to violence in southern Libya, where tribes and militias vie for control of lucrative smuggling routes with neighbouring Chad, Niger and Sudan. Saleh said he has ordered the armed forces "to take the measures necessary to respond to the assault and defend the south and cleanse it of all outlaw militias". His comments prompted alarm in Tripoli, with the GNA calling for an immediate ceasefire in the south.
Libya/Ansar al-Sharia – The Libyan jihadist group Ansar al-Sharia, which is linked to Al-Qaeda and deemed a terrorist organisation by the UN and United States, announced its "dissolution" in a communique published online on the 27 May 17. Washington accuses the group of being behind the 11 Sep 12 attack on the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi in which ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. Ansar al-Sharia is one of the jihadist groups that sprung up in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, in the chaos following the death of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. They overran the city in 2014. East Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar earlier this month launched an offensive to oust jihadist fighters from their two remaining strongholds in Benghazi. In its communiqué Ansar al-Sharia said it had been "weakened" by the fighting. The group lost its leader, Mohammed Azahawi, in clashes with Haftar's forces in Benghazi at the end of 2014. Most of its members then defected to the so-called Islamic State group. Ansar al-Sharia later joined the Revolutionary Shura Council of Benghazi, a local alliance of Islamist militias. At its zenith, Ansar al-Sharia was present in Benghazi and Derna in eastern Syria, with offshoots in Sirte and Sabratha, western Libya. The organisation took over barracks and other sites abandoned by the ousted Kadhafi forces and transformed them into training grounds for hundreds of jihadists seeking to head to Iraq or Syria.
Somalia/Da’esh – The Islamic State group has claimed its first suicide attack in Somalia that left five dead as it steps up activities in a region dominated by the Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab. The group's self-styled news agency Amaq claimed the "martyrdom-seeking operation with an explosive vest" in a statement carried by the SITE Intelligence Group which noted it was the first suicide bombing by the militants in Somalia. The suicide bomber detonated his explosives vest at a checkpoint in the north-eastern port city of Bosaso late on the 23 May 17 situated in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland. "Security forces stopped the suspect when he approached but he detonated himself leaving five people dead. One of the security officers and four civilians were killed in the blast," said local police official Mohamed Dahir Adan. The blast occurred near a hotel often used as a meeting place for local officials, witnesses said. "I think the bomber was trying to target the hotel but he was stopped at the checkpoint close to the hotel and he decided to detonate his explosives," said witness Awke Mohamed. The region has often come under attack by Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab militants and is also home to a breakaway group of fighters who have declared allegiance to IS. However the group has so far failed to gather much support while the Shabaab has taking pains to purge those expressing pro-IS sentiment from their ranks. The militants are led by former Shabaab cleric Abdiqadir Mumin who switched allegiance from Al-Qaeda to IS in Oct 15 and was named a "global terrorist" by the US State Department in August. Aside from issuing occasional promotional videos, the group seized the small fishing town of Qandala before being ousted by Puntland forces in Dec 16. Then in Feb 17 IS claimed an attack by gunmen on a hotel in Bosaso which left four security guards dead. Rashid Abdi of the International Crisis Group, said that while Mumin's group was stepping up its activities, the Shabaab remained the biggest threat in the region. Mumin was born in Puntland and lived in Sweden before moving to the UK in the 2000s, where he was granted British citizenship. In London and Leicester, he developed a reputation as a firebrand preacher at extremist mosques and in videos posted online. Monitored by MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, Mumin is thought to have known Mohamed Emwazi, the IS executioner nicknamed 'Jihadi John', and Michael Adebolajo, one of two people convicted over the 2013 murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in London. In 2010, Mumin travelled to Somalia to join the Shabaab, which both Emwazi and Adebolajo had unsuccessfully tried to do. He initially served as an imam and propagandist before taking control of the Puntland faction of the Shabaab and later defecting to IS with a handful of fighters despite lacking battlefield experience. Observers say his supporters are mostly made up of members of his own Majerteen clan, and the very existence of Mumin's group is attributed to complex local clan rivalries. The International Crisis Group estimated in Nov 16 that his group counted some 200 members and warned the threat of IS could not be "dismissed as insignificant". The group called for a "genuine political initiative to address local clan grievances".
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