Somalia Executes Three Shebab Militants

Three suspected Shebab Islamic militants were executed by firing squad in Mogadishu on Sunday, Somali police said.

All three had been condemned to death for murder, police chief Abdi Mohamed told AFP, with one of the men allegedly taking part in an assault on the presidential palace last month.

The executions come three days after another Somali MP was assassinated by Shebab guerrillas in the capital, the fifth this year, as the militants step up their attacks in Mogadishu to counter claims that their insurgency is waning.

"Three Al-Shebab members including the one who facilitated the last attack on the presidential palace were executed this morning," Mohamed said.

The men were shot in front of a small crowd of military officials and spectators at the police academy in Mogadishu.

Two other Shebab militants, who allegedly confessed to killing a student who worked for an NGO, were publicly executed in the capital on July 15.

The Somali government, which only controls part of the war-ravaged country, executed 15 people in 2013, according to Amnesty International, while another 19 people were executed in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland in the northeast.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has severely criticized the "unequal" way military courts are run, with normal procedures not followed. They claim the tribunals -- which the country's fragile government uses to try Shebab rebels -- had condemned dozens of people to death last year.

Earlier on Sunday, at least three women were killed and several others injured in Mogadishu after a bomb went off in a pile of rubbish, the authorities said.

The explosion occurred as the victims, thought to be street cleaners, were sweeping roads in the southern Hodon district, police said.

"We are not sure if the bomb was intentionally planted under the garbage or if it was an un-exploded object that was left during the war years ago," police official Bashir Nure said.

"Several of the women have died and some are injured but I don’t know exactly how many," he added.

Duniya Ali, an official at Medina hospital, confirmed three dead and 11 wounded from Sunday's blast.

But witness Mohamed Abdirahman counted four dead. "I saw the dead bodies of four innocent women due to the large explosion, seven others were also rushed to hospital with injuries,” he said.