Monday, August 27, 2007
The device was lobbed at Medina Hotel on Sunday, in the third incident targeting participants in the state-sponsored Somali National Reconciliation Congress.
Yusuf Salah, another delegate at the talks which - despite United Nations and Western support - had made little progress since opening on July 15, said: "The grenade landed outside the hotel and slightly wounded one of the delegates."
Last week, gunmen killed a respected elder participating in the peace process, while on Saturday grenades were fired at another hotel, wounding two delegates.
Another delegate to the talks, Amina Abdullahi, said: "Attacks against delegates are intensifying, but I don't think we will stop our will for lasting peace.
"We are devoted for what brought us here. We shall never surrender to those trying to undermine peace efforts."
Explosions rock Mogadishu
In a separate incident on Monday, Somali police killed a suspected insurgent trying to throw a grenade in southern Mogadishu. Mohammed Muhidin, a spokesperson for the city's mayor, said: "His body is lying near the police station."
On Sunday, a series of explosions rocked Mogadishu, killing two children and an elderly man, and wounding five other people.
Those blasts came a day after the Islamist-led militants vowed to step up their insurgency until Ethiopian forces deployed to bolster the feeble Somali government pulled out of Somalia.
Mogadishu, Somalia's epicentre of anarchy, had been hosting talks aimed at reconciling feuding factions and tightening President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's tenuous grip on power in the impoverished nation of 10 million.
The Islamist militants, who were ousted from the capital in April after months of clashes, and elders from Mogadishu's dominant Hawiye clan were boycotting the parley that was being backed by both the United Nations and Western powers.
Instead, they planned to launch separate talks in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on September 01.
Source: AFP, Aug 27, 2007