Somalia: Police Warn of Explosives-laden Car in Mogadishu, Using a Misleading Image

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

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.