Four killed, dozens wounded in Ethiopia blasts
May 12, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — At least four people were killed and 41 injured Friday as a wave of apparently coordinated blasts rocked the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, spewing blood and shattered glass.
Police described the nine blasts, the latest in a series of unclaimed mystery explosions to have hit the country during heightened political tensions this year, as “criminal acts” but could not say who was behind them.
Three of them occurred within 20 minutes of each other, killing two people at a crowded cafe in the capital’s northwest Mercato district, police said.
One more person was killed when two near simultaneous blasts hit a regional bus station in the Mercato area, and the fourth fatality was a passenger on a bus that was destroyed by an explosion in the city’s southwest.
Eighteen of the 41 injured were seriously hurt, police said.
In all, the explosions that ripped through two office buildings, the cafe, the bus station, three buses and beneath a bridge in different parts of Addis Ababa.
The biggest appeared to be at the Cafe Amico in Mercato around 9:40 am (0640 GMT) where two people died and seven were hurt, two of them seriously, while patrons were sipping mid-morning coffee, according to police and witnesses.
Blood and broken glass were strewn about the remains of the cafe’s veranda where distraught witnesses described a horrific explosion.
“I saw the waitresses falling down on the ground, I saw blood,” 15-year-old Berekat Betwidid said through tears and sobs.
“One waitress tried to crawl back inside and I ran away.”
The next deadly blast targetted a bus carrying 26 people in the southwest district of Gotera, according to Demsach Hailu of the Ethiopian Federal Police, who said one passenger was killed and 16 wounded, 10 seriously.
One person was killed and four injured in two blasts about 500 meters (500 yards) apart at the cavernous Mercato bus station, police said.
Another 14 people were hurt in two of three earlier separate blasts — two in the northern Piazza commercial district and one on a bus near a station in western Addis Ababa — that started in the pre-dawn hours, Demsach said.
Casualty figures were not immediately available for the other two blasts, one of which hit a minibus in the center of town near several government offices and the other under a bridge in the northern Yeka district, he said.
“These explosions are criminal acts,” Demsach said . “These people want to give the impression that there is no peace and stability in the city any more. All the explosions are targeting civilians.”
The blasts were the latest in more than a dozen to have hit Addis Ababa and provincial towns since the start of the year, killing at least seven people.
In early April, at least six were killed and dozens wounded when grenades exploded in bars and a market in towns in eastern and western Ethiopia.
Before Friday, Addis Ababa had been hit by at least 11 explosions, some attributed to grenades, others to landmines, since January, including a series of five on one day in March that killed one person on a bus and wounded 15.
No one has claimed responsibility but Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has claimed the material for the explosives has come from arch-rival neighbor Eritrea, a charge denied by Eritrean authorities.
Other officials have blamed separatist rebels, Somali Muslim extremists and opposition groups, which the government has accused of trying to foment a coup after disputed elections last year.
Tension has been high in Addis Ababa for months since at least 84 people died — many at the hands of police — during opposition-led protests against alleged fraud in the May 2005 election.
(St)