15 die in Somali grenade attack
2008-02-06 07:18
Mogadishu - A grenade tossed into a crowded house killed at least 15 people and wounded 50 others in northeastern Somalia on Tuesday, said an official.
Most of those killed or wounded in the attack in the northeastern region of Puntland were Ethiopians believed to be on their way to find work in the Arabian Peninsula, which lied across the Gulf of Aden, said Muse Geele Yusuf, a senior official in the region.
Police were searching for the attackers and trying to determine why the Ethiopians were targeted, Yusuf said.
But Ethiopia and Somalia had a long history of tense - and, at times, violent - relations. Ethiopian troops were propping up a shaky United Nations-backed government in the southern part of Somalia.
Puntland, unlike the south, had been relatively peaceful since Somalia's last functioning government collapsed in a 1991 revolt, leaving rival warlords to turn on each other and divide the nation among squabbling clans.
- AP