Somalia police command has put out an alert for an explosives-laden Toyota Prado car suspected to have been smuggled into the city.
In a press conference, Deputy Police Commander, Brigadier General Zakia Hussein Ahmed, held at the Police High Command in the Somalia capital, she warned of a possible terrorist attack in which the suspected car will be deployed.
Brigadier Zakia, the only female officer who has ever reached that rank in the armed and security forces of the troubled East African nation, asked residents to be on the lookout for a Toyota Prada Landcruiser, holding up a picture.
However, very soon after the press conference, the Somalia media published an exact replica of the car displayed in the printout the Deputy Commander used as evidence at the press brief, casting doubt on the veracity of the alert.
The media was quick to expose that the picture of the VBIED vehicle that Brigadier Zakia held up to the press was, indeed, pulled out from the Internet and it exactly matched the picture – make, colour, setting, background and all the one that they google-searched and published.
LOOK UP IMAGE AT: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toyota_Land_Cruiser_Prado_70_002.JPG
Many had always maintained that Somalia security forces were part of the circle which sustained the fear of more imminent attacks, themselves staging some of the so-called terrorist acts.
This appeared to be a classic case – at least on the outset.
It was only a day earlier that security forces in the lower Shabelle region of the Federal State of Southwest stated that they have foiled an operation in which a water-tanker truck was in the process of being filled with explosives, nails and other materials used to cause maximum damage when detonated.
Al Shabaab has of recently picked up its attacks on security forces and government buildings both within the city and outside of it, tightening and ever-narrowing the circle of its pressure on a fumbling, Farmajo-led administration that had done little to eliminate the terrorist siege on Mogadishu and other major cities in Somalia since it came to ;power over two years ago.
