A hard-line Somali Islamist prays near a roadblock in southern Mogadishu September 18, 2009
A hard-line Somali Islamist prays near a roadblock in southern Mogadishu September 18, 2009. Somalia's al Shabaab insurgents have six more stolen United Nations vehicles primed as suicide bombs, the government said on Friday. REUTERS

Somalia's Interior Minister Abdi Shakur Sheikh Hassan Farah has been killed in a suicide bomb attack, Somali state media announced earlier today.

The East African nation's authorities report that the bomber was a woman.

The minister was in his home in the Somali capital in Mogadishu when the blast fatally wounded Farah. He died shortly after he was hospitalized.

Government officials reported that an investigation is being carried out into the perpetrators of the attack. It is believed that the Somali branch of Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabab, is responsible.

Al-Qaeda Somalia Somalia