“The terrorists attacked Mahas town this morning using vehicles loaded with explosives.

“They have targeted a civilian area and we have confirmed that nine people, all of them civilians, died in the two explosions,” local security official Abdullahi Adan told AFP.

The attack, blamed on Al-Shabaab jihadist fighters, took place in the Hiran region of central Somalia, where a major offensive was launched last year against the Al-Qaeda-linked group.

The terrorists, after having (been) defeated, resorted to desperately targeting civilians, but this will not stop the will of the people to continue defeating them,” said Osman Nur, a police commander in Mahas.

“They have killed innocent civilians in the explosions,” he added.

Witnesses said the blasts occurred near a restaurant not far from a district administration building in Mahas.

I saw the dead bodies of nine civilians including women and children, this was a horrible attack,” said one witness, Adan Hassan.

Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has declared “all-out war” against Al-Shabaab, which has been waging a bloody insurgency against the fragile internationally-backed federal government for 15 years.

In July, local clan militias known as “Macawisley” launched a revolt against Al-Shabaab in parts of central Somalia, and Mohamud sent in troops in September to support the fight-back.

In recent months, the army and the militias have retaken swathes of territory in the central states of Galmudug and Hirshabelle (where Hiran is located) in an operation backed by US air strikes and an African Union (AU) force known as  ATMIS.

But the insurgents have frequently retaliated with bloody attacks, underlining their ability to strike at the heart of Somali towns and military installations despite the offensive.

Although forced out of the country’s main urban centres around 10 years ago, Al-Shabaab remains entrenched in vast swathes of rural central and southern Somalia.

On October 29, 121 people in the capital Mogadishu were killed in two car bomb explosions at the education ministry, in the deadliest attack in the troubled Horn of Africa nation in five years.

Eight civilians died on November 27 in a 21-hour siege at a hotel in Mogadishu popular with politicians and government officials.

A triple bombing in October in the city of Beledweyne, the capital of Hiran, left 30 people dead including local officials.

And at least 21 people were killed in a siege of a Mogadishu hotel in August that lasted 30 hours before security forces were able to overpower the militants inside.

“The president decided to suspend Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble and stop his powers since he was linked with corruption,” the office of the president said in a statement, accusing the premier of interfering with an investigation into a land grabbing case.

Relations between the president, better known as Farmajo, and Roble have long been frosty, with the latest development raising fresh fears for Somalia’s stability as it struggles to hold elections.

On Sunday, Roble accused the president of sabotaging the electoral process, after Farmajo withdrew the prime minister’s mandate to organise the elections and called for the creation of a new committee to “correct” the shortcomings.

Roble, who has not responded to Monday’s suspension announcement, said Farmajo did not want to hold “a credible election in this country”.

Farmajo in turn has accused Roble of trying to influence a probe into a scandal involving army-owned land after the premier sacked the defence minister and replaced him on Sunday.

“The prime minister has pressurised the minister of defence to divert the investigations of the case relating to the grabbed public land,” Monday’s statement said.

Somalia’s elections have been hamstrung by delays for several months.

The free web-based encyclopedia project which contains information on a wide variety of subjects described a failed state as a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly.

It further added that a state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly. For a stable state, it is necessary for the government to enjoy both effectiveness and legitimacy. Likewise, when a nation weakens and it’s standard of living declines, it introduces the possibility of total governmental collapse.

Some countries listed as a failed state include; Syria, Somalia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Liberia, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan.