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Mogadishu Bombing, Sports Leaders Killed

Yet another terrorist bombing hit the capital of Somalia on April 4 2012. Two of the country's most prominent leaders in sports were killed, along with eight others, and a large number of injured. The tragedy is double because the attack came as the people were beginning to feel the years of chaos might be ending. The following is adapted from Reuters.com:

Reflecting the feelings of many of her fellow Somalians, Safia Omar said a bombing of Somalia's national theatre had robbed her country of a brief sense that things were getting better.

The bombing - which targeted the prime minister - killed at least six people including two of Somalia's top sports officials after a young female suicide bomber walked into the theatre and blew herself up. Islamist militant group al Shabaab claimed the attack.

"Our hopes for peace faded with yesterday's blast," Omar, the owner of a kiosk, told Reuters. She said she doubted there would be any stability for as long as President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a former Islamist commander, remained at the helm of the lawless nation.

"Whenever we get a sniff of peace, explosions take place, wiping out any new-found sense of pleasure," she said.

"Al Shabaab are hated and they are weak, but these officials are sustaining the violence."

The theatre had only reopened its doors for the first time in 20 years in mid March, an event which it had been hoped marked a new chapter in Somalia's history. Instead the attack underscored how fragile any progress is.

I could not find the time of day for the bombing, but shadows in photos showed it was near noon. The GCP event was set for 12 to 18:00 local time (9 to 15:00 UTC). The result is Chisquare 22014.945 on 21600 df, for p = 0.023 and Z = 1.987.

Mogadishu Bombing,
Sports Leaders

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.


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