RRA says it carried out attack

The Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA), which controls the Bay and Bakol regions in southwestern Somalia, has claimed that it carried out the attack on the town of Wanle Weyne, 90 km northwest of Mogadishu, where at least 19 people were killed on 27 May. Shaykh Adan Muhammad Nur, deputy chairman of the RRA, has now admitted to IRIN that his organisation had mounted the attack, after earlier denying having done so.

The Transitional National Government (TNG) in Mogadishu on 27 May accused the RRA of being behind the attack, but this was denied the following day, Monday. Muhammad Ali Adan Qalinle, the governor of Baidoa, 240 km northwest of Mogadishu, told IRIN that the TNG’s accusations were “without foundation”. “We had nothing to do with it. It was probably a local uprising by people fed up with the TNG,” he said. He went on to accuse the TNG of massing troops in the area, whose “only purpose is to provoke the local people”.

On Wednesday, however, in a telephone call from Baidoa, the headquarters of the RRA and the capital of Bay region, Shaykh Adan Muhammad Nur told IRIN: “It was the RRA which carried out the attack”. He said that the RRA would persevere with its fight until “we remove the TNG and its supporters from all Digil and Mirifle lands”, of which Wanle Weyne was “part and parcel”. He went on to say that the main road between Mogadishu and Baidoa, which passes through Wanle Weyne, would be open for traffic “on Fridays only, due to security concerns on our part”.