6 wounded at Somalia airport in ‘laptop bomb’ attack

Mogadishu: Six people were wounded on Monday when a laptop bomb exploded at an airport in Somalia, police said, the second such attack in recent weeks targeting passenger aircraft.

The bomb exploded at a screening area in the airport in the small central town of Beledweyne, some 325 kilometres north of Mogadishu, where last month Al-Qaida-linked Al Shabab insurgents claimed responsibility for a bomb attack, which ripped a hole in a passenger plane shortly after takeoff.

“A laptop computer went off at the screening area, and the security forces have also managed to defuse two other explosive devices, one of them planted in a printer,” police Lieutenant Colonel Ali Dhuh Abdi told reporters. “Six people were wounded, two of them policemen.”

The blast on Monday took place at a checking area where security screening is carried out before cargo and bags are loaded onto planes. The security checkpoint was manned by African Union troops from Djibouti as well as Somali government security forces.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.