Al Shabaab Militants Attacked Somalia's President

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.

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."

"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.