Claims by Somalia's spy agency NISA that a foreign country instigated Mogadishu attack continues to raise mixed reactions.
Early this week, NISA said that a preliminary report shows that a foreign country played a major role in the attack.
However, on Monday, Al-Shabaab militants took responsibility of the attack that left over 90 people dead and scores injured last week.
A commentator in one of Turkish paper dragged United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the attack.
However, a number of experts have dismissed the assertions, arguing that despite Somalia's standoff with certain nations, it's highly unlikely that the attack was engineered by foreigners.
“Evidence left behind from the bomb vehicle that exploded in Mogadishu leads us to the UAE,” wrote Ibrahim Karagul, a senior columnist for the Yeni Safak daily.
“UAE complicity in a Shabaab truck bomb attack seems extremely unlikely,” US-based author Prof Ken Menkhaus wrote in an email on Tuesday. “UAE is staunchly opposed to Shabaab and everything it stands for.”
The Somalia specialist added, “Al-Shabaab already has years of expertise in assembly of car and truck bombs. Why would it need help from any foreign government?”
Another expert on Horn of Africa affairs insisted that UAE could not wage an attack without any strategic benefit like Saturday's onslaught.
“I find the claim of UAE’s involvement implausible,Joshua Meservey told the Nation. “It has bad relations with Mogadishu at the moment, but it still makes no sense that the UAE would partner with an avowed enemy (al-Shabaab), and particularly not for an attack that has no strategic benefit for the UAE.”