Suicide bomber strikes near Somali PM, kills 2

October 10, 2007 (BAIDOA, Somalia) — A suspected suicide bomber blew up a car in an Ethiopian military base near a hotel where Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi was staying, killing two soldiers, witnesses said on Wednesday.

“We could hear the loud explosion when the car rammed into the base,” Gedi spokesman Muse Kulow said.

“The prime minister is safe but two soldiers were killed, along with the bomber, and three Ethiopians were injured.”

Gedi and President Abdullahi Yusuf have travelled to Baidoa this week to attend parliamentary sessions. Their government is facing an insurgency led by Islamists whom they ejected from Mogadishu, with Ethiopian military help, at the end of 2006.

Gedi has survived a string of attempts on his life.

Yusuf and Gedi were meeting supporters in Baidoa where there are rumours among legislators that the president wants to push a no confidence vote in his prime minister through parliament.

A growing rift between the pair has provided yet another headache for the Somali government, which has failed to stem the insurgency and is also overwhelmed by humanitarian problems among its 9 million population.

In an Iraq-style campaign, the government and its Ethiopian allies have been attacked near-daily since early 2007 by mainly Islamist fighters who call them an illegitimate administration propped up by foreign “invaders”.

Most of the attacks have been in the capital Mogadishu, but there have also been several previous suicide blasts in Baidoa.

On Tuesday in Mogadishu, insurgents carried out one of their heaviest assaults on a police station near Bakara market, police spokesman Abdiwahid Mohamed Hussein said.

“Around seven in the evening, insurgents assailed Hawlwadag police station, firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns,” he told Reuters by telephone.

“The police fought them and killed two of the insurgents while seriously wounding one. He was rushed to Medina hospital, but he died before reaching the hospital.”

On Wednesday morning, unknown gunmen shot three men in the south Mogadishu neighbourhood of Bulo Hubey.

“Early this morning two men armed with pistols shot three men in civilian dress around Bulo Hubey. Two of them were dead and the third one was in serious condition. The victims were government employees,” said a witness who asked not be named.

Madina hospital sources confirmed one person who was gravely wounded in the head was admitted to the hospital.

In the southern port city of Kismayu, two civilians died and nine were wounded after a landmine explosion targeted a security agent on Wednesday.

“Unknown gunmen remotely detonated a landmine when my car was passing at Alanley neighbourhood. My bodyguards, driver and I survived, but the gunmen opened fire at us after the blast and my bodyguards defended me,” the security agent told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Witnesses said the blast killed two. “They were cut to pieces,” local inhabitant Fadumo Abdulahi Hirse said.

(Reuters)