Somalian president escapes bomb attack

BAIDOA, Somalia - President Abdullahi Yusuf escaped a bomb on Monday that killed five people and wounded several others outside parliament in the provincial capital Baidoa.

He blamed it on al Qaeda. The attack is sure to heighten tension between Somalia's weak official government and Islamists who control Mogadishu and a large swathe of the south.

"This explosion came from a suicide bomber," he told the BBC Somali service when asked who was behind the attack that came as lawmakers approved a new cabinet.

"There is nothing like this in Somalia except for al Qaeda. Anyone who is looking for a solution for Somalia will not get it through political assassinations and suicide bombings."

Foreign Minister Ismail Hurre Buba, in Nairobi, told Reuters a car had exploded as the president's convoy was passing on the way to his residence.

"It was an assassination attempt on the president," he said.

Hurre said five people were killed in the blast. Yusuf escaped unharmed but said his own brother was one of the dead.

Hurre said six attackers had been killed in a gunbattle with Yusuf's bodyguards after the explosion that he said had been triggered from afar.

"It was characteristically an (al) Qaeda-type attempt (with) a car being put next to other cars and an explosion taking place through remote control," he said.

Interior Minister Hussein Mohamed Farah Aideed said it was too soon to point the finger at any group. He said security forces in the volatile nation of 10 million arrested two suspects.

A Reuters reporter at the scene saw black smoke billowing from burning cars close to the parliament building, which appeared to have dead bodies in them.

Government militiamen quickly cordoned off the area around parliament, a converted grain warehouse in the town 240km from the capital Mogadishu.

Scores of relatives thronged Baidoa's main hospital, where one casualty was admitted with his hand blown off.

Both Hurre and Islamist spokesman Abdirahim Ali Mudey said Monday's violence was linked to the murder on Sunday of an Italian nun shot in Mogadishu.

"Whoever was behind that is behind this," Hurre told a news conference in Nairobi.

But senior Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed blamed outside interference, singling out Ethiopia, which witnesses and regional experts say has deployed troops to Somalia to protect the internationally recognised government now in its second year.

"I accuse foreign sides, particularly Ethiopia because it seeks to send foreign troops (to Somalia) and wants to justify its position at the United Nations," Ahmed told al Jazeera television.

"There seems to be many conspiracies being made against this country."

The Islamists and the government have held two rounds of talks in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, pledging to form a joint military force.

"It will jeopardise the peace process if it becomes very obvious that the Islamists are behind this terrorist act," Hurre said, adding that the government was still prepared to meet with "moderate elements" of the Islamic courts.

In July, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said al Qaeda had training bases in Somalia and was intent on plunging the nation, without effective central rule since 1991, into further chaos.

Witnesses said the parliamentary session carried on as normal after the blast, with 174 lawmakers out of the 199 present approving the cabinet. Gedi had named new ministers after Yusuf declared the earlier cabinet ineffective and dissolved it on August 7.

The violence was the latest to target political figures. In July, gunmen shot dead a Somali minister in Baidoa.

In 2005 Gedi survived two assassination attempts in Mogadishu and Jowhar.

Somalia descended into lawlessness in 1991 when warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and the country's 14th attempt at central administration since the ouster has been stymied by infighting and the newly empowered Islamists.

- REUTERS