Al Shabaab now making deadly bombs: UN
http://www.hrlnews.com/2019/05/al-shabaab-now-making-deadly-bombs-un.html
A secret UN report said Al Shabaab, Somali Islamist insurgents are
making their own bombs, as they mount more frequent and deadly attacks.
The findings are a blow for internationally backed efforts to fight
the al Shabaab insurgency, which has repeatedly carried out attacks in
East Africa and launched dozens in Somalia this year despite a dramatic
increase in U.S. air strikes.
“For the first time, post-blast laboratory analyses … indicate a
clear shift in al Shabaab construction methods, away from the use of
military-grade explosives and toward HME (home-made explosives,” said a
confidential report by the U.N. panel of experts on Somalia, which was
seen by Reuters.
“Information from a range of Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD)
experts suggests a probable connection between the development of HME by
al Shabaab and the recent increased frequency of major attacks in
Mogadishu.”
The analysis was based on at least 20 attacks since July 2018, the report said.
It specify who did the analysis, but footnotes cited the U.N. Mine
Action Service, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and experts who
were not named but only identified by the dates on which they were
interviewed.
The U.N. panel declined to comment, and the two organisations did not respond to questions from Reuters.
Somali government officials could not be reached for comment. Lt Col
Charles Imbiakha, spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping force
AMISOM, said it could not comment because it had not seen the report.
Al Shabaab, which wants to rule Somalia in line with a strict
interpretation of sharia law, has carried out at least 19 attacks with
vehicle-borne bombs that have killed more than five people in Mogadishu
since September, the report found.
Hitherto, the insurgency has mostly relied on military-grade
explosives, laboriously harvested by specialists from ordnance such as
mines or mortars captured from soldiers or peacekeepers.
But the attacks have become more frequent, or in some cases more
dramatic – most notably the truck bomb that killed more than 500 people
in October 2017 at a junction where street vendors were selling petrol.
Experts have long suspected that that bomb may have used some home-made explosives, but no evidence had been made public.
The U.N. panel report also does not offer evidence but notes that al
Shabaab would have needed explosives from approximately 6,000 mortars to
carry out a blast of that size.
It said al Shabaab bomb-makers were now mixing highly explosive
nitroglycerine with ammonium nitrate or potassium nitrate – both used in
fertilisers – and charcoal, although it did not say where they were
being obtained.
A raid on an underground site in Mogadishu last month recovered
components and chemicals that included aluminium paste, which can
enhance the thermal effect of a detonation, the report said.
There are no public statistics on bombings in Somalia. The U.S. Joint
Improvised-Threat Defeat Organisation, part of the Pentagon, said it
did not track bombings and the Somali government does not release
statistics.
*Reuters