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Prominent Somali Woman Lawmaker Among 15 Killed in Bombing

A young boy runs past the wreckage of a vehicle destroyed in an attack on police and checkpoints on the outskirts of the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022. (AP File Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)
A young boy runs past the wreckage of a vehicle destroyed in an attack on police and checkpoints on the outskirts of the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022. (AP File Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)
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Prominent Somali Woman Lawmaker Among 15 Killed in Bombing

A young boy runs past the wreckage of a vehicle destroyed in an attack on police and checkpoints on the outskirts of the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022. (AP File Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)
A young boy runs past the wreckage of a vehicle destroyed in an attack on police and checkpoints on the outskirts of the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022. (AP File Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

A prominent Somali woman lawmaker is among at least 15 people killed in a suicide bombing that hit a polling station in rural central Somalia, police said Thursday.

The attack took place late Wednesday in the town of Beledweyne, the capital of Somalia's Hiran region.

Among its victims was opposition lawmaker Amina Mohamed Abdi, an outspoken government critic who was campaigning to retain her seat in the National Assembly.

Al-Shabab, Somalia's extremist rebel group, claimed responsibility for the attack. The 15 people killed were “mostly civilians” and the attack wounded “an unspecific number" of people, police officer Ahmed Hassan told AP by phone.

“I was at a walking distance to the polling station when a suicide bomber rushed towards the member of parliament Amina and embraced her and blew himself up," eyewitness Dhaqane Hassan said. “Shots were fired in the air by the soldiers who seemed shocked, but unfortunately she instantly died at the scene.”

Abdi, the legislator killed at a polling station, was in Beledweyne campaigning for re-election in a vote expected to take place this week.

“Somalia has lost a promising giant leader, an activist, a fearless advocate who finally paid the ultimate price for seeking justice for Ikram Tahlil," said lawmaker Abdirizak Mohamed, speaking of a female intelligence officer whose killing Abdi had been trying to investigate.

President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble condemned the attack.

Two other extremist attacks occurred in Beledweyne Wednesday, killing former lawmaker Hassan Dhuhul, a traditional elder and civilians sitting outside a busy restaurant, police said. No more details were immediately available on those attacks.

The attacks in Beledweyne came hours after an attack in the capital, Mogadishu, in which two al-Shabab gunmen tried to force their way into the international airport in the capital.

Somali forces and African Union peacekeepers said they ended that assault by killing both the attackers. At least six people were killed in that attack, including at least one African Union peacekeeper, according to police. Authorities did not reveal the identities of the victims.

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UN Approves More Transparent Procedures for People, Entities to Get Off Sanctions Lists

Members of the United Nations Security Council attend a meeting at UN headquarters in New York, US, October 5, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo
Members of the United Nations Security Council attend a meeting at UN headquarters in New York, US, October 5, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo
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UN Approves More Transparent Procedures for People, Entities to Get Off Sanctions Lists

Members of the United Nations Security Council attend a meeting at UN headquarters in New York, US, October 5, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo
Members of the United Nations Security Council attend a meeting at UN headquarters in New York, US, October 5, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo

The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved more transparent procedures Friday for the hundreds of individuals, companies and other entities who are subject to UN sanctions and want to get off the blacklists.
The resolution, co-sponsored by Malta and the United States, also authorizes the establishment of a new informal working group by the Security Council to examine ways to improve the effectiveness of UN sanctions.
Malta’s UN Ambassador Vanessa Frazier told the council before the vote that the resolution is a “clear signal of this council’s commitment towards due process.”
It authorizes a new “focal point” to directly engage with those seeking to get off sanctions lists and gather information from a variety of sources to share with the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions, which makes the decisions on delisting, she said. And it requires the reason for the committee’s decision to be given to the petitioner.
After the vote, US deputy ambassador Robert Wood called the council’s unanimous approval “a historic moment,” saying delisting procedures haven't changed for 18 years.
“The international community is demonstrating its commitment to values such as transparency and fairness in UN sanctions processes,” he said.
“Security Council sanctions are an important tool to deter an array of threats to peace and security, ranging from the proliferation of arms and weapons of mass destruction, to countering terrorism and preventing human rights abuses,” The Associated Press quoted Wood as saying.
But he stressed that to be effective, sanctions must be targeted and there must be “robust and fair procedures for delisting when warranted.”
The United States is against indefinite and punitive sanctions, and supports delisting and easing sanctions when warranted, Wood said. “But we are concerned by a growing tendency to prematurely lift sanctions, when the threats that prompted their imposition in the first place still persist.”
He didn’t give any examples but the US and its allies including South Korea and Japan have vehemently opposed Russian and Chinese proposals to ease sanctions on North Korea, which violates UN sanctions regularly with its ballistic missile tests and nuclear developments.
Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyansky said Moscow proceeds from the premise that Security Council sanctions “are one of the most stringent and robust responses to threats to peace. Therefore, they should be applied in an exceedingly cautious way.”
“They need to be irreproachable, be substantiated, and they need to be nuanced,” he said. “The use of such sanctions as a punitive tool is unacceptable.”
Polyansky stressed that sanctions need to reflect the real situation in a country and “help facilitate a political process.”
But he said the Security Council doesn’t always follow this approach, and blamed the West for increasingly encouraging the use of sanctions in recent years.