Mogadishu's Mayor Succumbs to Wounds From Suicide Attack

The mayor of Mogadishu, Abdirahman Omar Osman, has died as a result of a suicide attack that occurred last week in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, the Somali government said.

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Osman died on Thursday after spending days in a coma in a Qatari hospital, where he had been transported for treatment on July 24, after the attack.

“Today the people of Mogadishu lose their mayor, but I lost my father. May Allah grant him the highest rank of paradise,” said his son on his Twitter account.

Six people including two district commissioners and three directors were killed during a meeting in the mayor’s office when a female suicide bomber blasted a device inside the headquarters of Banadir district, which encompasses Mogadishu. It remains unclear how the suicide bomber managed to enter the mayor's office.

The armed group Al-Shabab, claimed responsibility for the assault. Al-Shabab is an Al-Qaeda-linked armed group whose objective is to overthrow the current Western-backed government. They regularly stage attacks against the Somali military, and against troops from the African Union-mandated peacekeeping force AMISOM. They were allegedly targeting the U.N. special envoy James Swan, who had been in the building just a few moments before the explosion.

Swan condemned the “heinous” attack on “those trying to rebuild their country and improve the lives of its citizens.” He said Osman had spent years “helping his country on its path to peace and stability, and meeting the needs of Mogadishu’s most vulnerable.”

Osman had publicly and on various occasions firmly denounced Al-Shabab, urging Somalis to speak out against the group. “The fight must go on, in everything we do, from reporting anything suspicious to the security forces to educating our boys and girls so they are not vulnerable to the violent, alien ideology of al-Shabaab,” he had stated when he served as the country’s minister for information.