Somali militants target presidential convoy in bomb attack, president safe

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Al Shabaab militants targeted Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in a bomb attack on his motorcade as it was traveling through the capital Mogadishu on Tuesday, the Islamist group said.

Two senior government and military officials told Reuters that Mohamud was safe following the attack, and presidential adviser Zakariye Hussein wrote in a post on X that he was "good and well on his way to the front lines."

Soldiers and local residents who witnessed the attack confirmed that the president's convoy had been hit. A Reuters journalist at the scene saw the bodies of four people killed in the assault near the presidential palace.

"Our fighters targeted a convoy of vehicles carrying Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as they were leaving the presidential palace and heading to the airport," al Shabaab said in a statement posted on the al Qaeda-linked group's Telegram channel.

While al Shabaab regularly carries out attacks in Somalia as part of its decades-long campaign to topple the government, Tuesday's attack was the first to directly target Mohamud since 2014, during his first term in office, when they bombed a hotel where he was speaking.

Hours after the attack on Tuesday, state media showed images of the president in the Adan Yabal district of Somalia's Middle Shabelle region, where government forces are battling a three-week-old al Shabaab offensive.

(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Ammu Kannampilly and Joe Bavier)