Event Summary
- Sunday 26th July 2015; at least 13 dead and scores others injured in Al Shabaab suicide attack on Jazeera hotel in Somali’s capital, Mogadishu.
- The popular Jazeera Palace Hotel is a home to diplomatic missions of China, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
- The suicide blast damaged Chinese embassy and at least one Chinese embassy worker was killed in the attack.
- TIP issues a statement on Twitter thanking Al Shabaab for damaging Chinese Embassy in a suicide bombing.
Analysis
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) has praised and thanked the members of Harakat al Shabaab al Mujahideen movement for damaging the Chinese embassy through a suicide bombing at the Jazeera Palace Hotel located in Somali’s capital Mogadishu.
Al Shabaab used a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, or a suicide car bomb, to detonate near the hotel after ramming the gates of the complex.
The Jazeera Palace hotel attack by the Somali based jihadists Al Shabaab was a retaliatory in response to AMISOM helicopter bombings that have seen the militants lose key strategic areas such as Bardheere and Dinsoor.
Turkistan Islamic Party is an affiliate of the broader Al Qaeda terrorist group while the Somali based Al Shabaab is also an affiliate of Al Qaeda. Several top leaders of the TIP have held senior roles in al Qaeda’s leadership; for example, Abdul Shakoor Turkistani.
According to SITE Intelligence Group, Turkistan Islamic Party statement praising Al Shabaab attack saying the act was a practical aggression of communist government of China against the Muslims in the forgotten Islamic East Turkistan.
Forecast
The jihadist group posting a statement on Twitter congratulating the shabaab mujahideen in Somalia can be interpreted as welcome move that may see the two militant groups carryout jihadi operations together.
The TIP is largely made up of ethnic Uighurs and fights with the aim of creating an Islamic caliphate in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
The outfit also operates in Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China fighting alongside Taliban, Al Qaeda among other jihadists groups. In Syria it fights alongside the Al Nusrah Fron which is al Qaeda’s official branch in the country.
TIP’s leaders and fighters have been killed by Coalition forces in Afghanistan and by US drone strikes in Pakistan.
