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A suicide bomber blew up a truck at an Ethiopian army base in the Somalian capital of Mogadishu on Thursday, an attack Somalian Deputy Defense Minister Salad Ali Jelle blamed on al Qaeda elements. The bombing was the third suicide attack in Somalia since June 2006, when hostilities began between the country's interim government and the Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC), the group that gained and ultimately lost control of much of the country.
While the first two attacks occurred in the Somalian city of Baidoa and targeted the government of Somalian President Abdullahi Yusuf, Thursday's attack was aimed at the Ethiopian forces that arrived in the country in December 2006 to reinforce the Somalian government's position. The blast, which likely was meant to further the Islamist goals of driving the Ethiopians from Somalia and collapsing Somalia's secular government, came only days after an al Qaeda node staged similar bombings in both Algeria and Morocco. It reveals that al Qaeda's reach has expanded from the Horn of Africa to include the northern part of the continent.
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