50 killed in Somalia attacks
2008-08-16 10:08
Mogadishu - Almost 50 people were killed in Somalia after separate roadside bombs targeting allied Ethiopian and government troops went off and led to retaliatory attacks, residents said on Friday.
In one clash on Friday afternoon, Ethiopian troops opened
fire on civilians on a road out of Mogadishu when an explosion
occurred in the middle of their convoy.
"I heard a big explosion and a vehicle in an Ethiopian
convoy exploded," said Abdirahman Adan, who lives alongside the
road out of the capital to the southern town of Afgooye.
"Ethiopian soldiers in the convoy started to shoot
indiscriminately. I ran away, but when I came back half an hour
later, I saw 38 people had died and 16 injured."
Adan said some of the dead had been passengers on buses that
travel the route.
Another local resident, Hawa Abdi, said a relative was
wounded during the incident. She saw five people that had died
from the attack and 20 others who were hurt.
"We wanted to reach Mogadishu's big hospital but we are
unable to pass the streets because the road is closed," she said.
Roadside bomb
In a separate attack, about five people were killed when a
roadside bomb exploded as government troops checked out a street
ahead of a presidential motorcade.
President Abdullahi Yusuf, his estranged Prime Minister Nur
Hassan Hussein and parliamentary speaker were heading for Addis
Ababa in Ethiopia for talks over a growing rift between the two
leaders. They later managed to leave the country, officials
said.
Yusuf's fragile interim government is struggling to assert
its authority in the face of a 20-month Iraqi-style insurgency.
Somalia has witnessed unending violence since former strongman
Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991.
The attacks came a day before a separate UN-brokered peace
talks begun in neighbouring Djibouti.
The violence in Somalia has already claimed the lives of
more than 8 000 civilians and driven one million from their homes
since January 2007.