By Abdiqani Hassan
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
The dead were mostly migrants from neighbouring Ethiopia who had been planning to make the dangerous crossing from Bosasso to Yemen.
Hundreds of people including elders and government officials attended the burial in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland.
"We buried all the dead in three mass graves after their fellow Ethiopians in Bosasso arrived and identified their loved ones this morning," Bosasso Mayor Abdirisaq Hared told Reuters.
At least 100 others were wounded in Tuesday's explosion. A senior police officer said authorities were still investigating the cause.
Thousands of people fleeing poverty and violence in Somalia and Ethiopia risk passage through northern Somalia to make the boat trip to Yemen in the hope of better lives.
But hundreds of immigrants die every year, often when overloaded boats capsize or sink in the shark-infested Gulf of Aden.
Puntland is peaceful compared with southern Somalia, where the interim government and its Ethiopian military allies are battling an insurgency led by Islamist militants. (Writing by Aweys Yusuf; editing by Daniel Wallis and Andrew Roche)
Source: Reuters, Feb 06, 2008