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...choice of targets appears to have been a demonstration of the group's power because it occurred in one of the few remaining areas of Mogadishu that the Transitional Federal Government still controls. Al Shabaab fighters have advanced steadily across the country in recent months, while the TFG has been unable to expand its own control despite the backing of the United States, other western powers and neighboring powers Ethiopia and Kenya...
...Umarov's organization - calling itself the Martyrs' Battalion Riyadus-Salikhiyn - announced a change of strategy. In a statement issued on the separatist website kavkazcenter.com, the group said it would no longer confine its battle to the heavily policed regions that it seeks to control. Russia's industrial centers, factories and infrastructure would become the targets. "To carry out these tasks, subversive groups were created and sent to a host of Russian regions with the aim of carrying out industrial sabotage. The priority targets laid out for them are gas pipelines, oil pipelines, the destruction of electricity stations and high-voltage...
...later claimed responsibility for, a truck packed with explosives rammed through the gates of a police station in the city of Nazran in the North Caucasus and detonated its payload, killing 25 policemen and injuring more than 150 others as they lined up for the morning head count. The group also took responsibility for a hydroelectric-dam accident that killed 75 people in Siberia on the same day. But the attack on the Neva Express, a luxury train from Moscow to St. Petersburg used by wealthy Russians and government officials, appears to be Umarov's first major operation...
...Shabaab militia, a rebel group linked to al-Qaeda, quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. In an interview with TIME, a man who identified himself as Sheikh Abdifatah, a senior al Shabaab official in Mogadishu, said the group had targeted the ceremony as part of its war on the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government. More attacks are to come, he warned. "We did not target the students -our target was the TFG, and each day and every hour we will keep fighting ... Our goal is to target the enemy of Allah. We will never give up pursuing the enemy...
...Shabaab are a hard-core al-Qaeda group, and they are really establishing a foothold and deepening their bases in Somalia," Nuruddin Dirie, a London-based Somalia analyst and former presidential candidate in its Puntland region, tells TIME. "We knew they would target the government officials, but a hotel setting, targeting the graduating students, it tells us quite a lot about how ruthless, how uncaring this enemy is." (Read how Somalia's fishermen became pirates...