Blast in Somali capital kills 14, mostly women

August 3, 2008 (MOGADISHU) — A roadside explosion in Mogadishu on Sunday killed at least 14 people, most of them women who were sweeping a street in the Somali capital, witnesses said. Nearly 50 people were wounded.

Residents said a remotely detonated device exploded along a main road leading to the presidential palace.

“We have now collected the pieces of nine dead women and still there are other parts scattered,” witness Fardowsa Ahmed told Reuters.

“A minibus full of seriously injured women was rushed to hospital and I think the death toll will be more than this. Only two women who sell tea along the road survived,” she added.

Islamist insurgents launch near-daily attacks on the transition administration and its Ethiopian military allies. The Horn of Africa nation has not had a functioning central government since 1991.

A rift has also opened within the interim administration between President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein. Two-thirds of cabinet ministers resigned on Saturday and Hussein was expected to name a new cabinet late on Sunday.

Violence has killed more than 8,000 civilians and driven one million more from their homes in Somalia since allied Somali-Ethiopian forces kicked an Islamist group out of Mogadishu early last year.

Four victims of the attack on Sunday died in the emergency room at the main Madina hospital and another woman died later, bringing the death toll to 14, hospital officials said. They expected the number of dead to rise.

On Friday a roadside bomb killed a Ugandan member of a small African Union peacekeeping force based in the capital.

(Reuters)