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DEATH TOLL FROM SOMALIA SUICIDE BOMBS RISES TO 28 - RESIDENTS
By Hussein Ali Noor
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
HARGEISA, Somalia, Oct 29 (Reuters) - A wave of suicide bombings struck targets across northern Somalia on Wednesday in attacks that snatched attention from political crisis talks taking place in neighbouring Kenya.
The five synchronised blasts that rocked Hargeisa and Bosasso killed several people and wounded dozens.
No group immediately claimed responsibility. But in recent months, Islamist insurgents fighting Somalia's Western-backed interim government have launched attacks to coincide with international efforts to end the turmoil in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
The bombers hit as leaders of the interim government met regional heads of state for talks in Nairobi. The four-year-old administration is under pressure to solve the chaos and share some power with moderate opposition figures.
In Hargeisa, in breakaway Somaliland region, witnesses said three bombers attacked the president's office, a U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) compound and the Ethiopian embassy.
Journalist Ali Jama Mohamed was walking past the presidency when a car crashed into its doors.
"There was a big explosion and I saw many people, mostly pedestrians and some security guards, thrown to the floor. Some were dead and others wounded," Mohamed told Reuters.
Witnesses said the UNDP building and Ethiopian mission were also badly damaged by the blasts and that several people were killed and dozens wounded at both locations.
WAVE OF ATTACKS
In Bosasso, in neighbouring semi-autonomous Puntland, two suicide bombers detonated explosives-laden cars inside the Intelligence Service compound, killing two soldiers and a woman and wounding several other people.
"The two cars and their drivers were blown to pieces," Muse Gelle, the governor of Bari region, told Reuters. "It is too early to know all the casualties. Tensions are high and Puntland soldiers have surrounded all government institutions."
Puntland and Somaliland had been relatively quiet compared to southern Somalia, where the government and its Ethiopian military allies are battling rebels fighting with roadside bombs, artillery strikes and assassinations.
The violence has killed nearly 10,000 civilians and an unknown number of combatants since the start of last year. More than a million people have been driven from their homes.
The rebels have previously launched big attacks during mediation efforts in a move analysts say is calculated to show the interim administration who is in control on the ground.
When government officials and some opposition figures signed a peace pact at U.N.-led negotiations in Djibouti in August, hardline al Shabaab insurgents seized the strategic southern port of Kismayu in fighting that killed at least 70 people.
The Shabaab have since consolidated their control of the area, and on Monday they stoned to death a 23-year-old woman accused of adultery -- the first such public killing by the Islamists for about two years. (Additional reporting by Abdiqani Hassan in Bosasso; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Angus MacSwan).
Source: Reuters, Oct 29, 2008