 Somalia's president narrowly escaped an assassination attempt Monday by a suicide car bomber outside the parliament building, officials said. The blast and a subsequent gunbattle left 11 people dead, including the president's brother. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in Baidoa, the only town controlled by the government. But if it is linked to an Islamic militia that has seized control of much of southern Somalia, it could cause peace talks between the two sides to fall apart.
| Right. Try to assassinate me and I'll quit talking to you, too. |
"It was definitely a suicide bombing," Foreign Minister Ismail Mohamed Hurre told The Associated Press in Nairobi, Kenya, saying it was clear from the state of the attacker's remains. The bomb exploded outside the parliament building where President Abdullahi Yusuf had given a speech about 10 minutes earlier, said Mohamed Adawe, a journalist who witnessed the blast.
Yusuf's bodyguards chased suspected bombers, killing six of them in a gunbattle. The five other dead — including the president's brother — were in the his convoy, officials said. "This explosion was intended to kill the president, but he escaped and he is safe," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said.
Eight cars were burned in the blast, including three from Yusuf's convoy. The blast came a day after a nun was gunned down outside a hospital where she worked in Mogadishu, about 150 miles from Baidoa. There was no claim of responsibility, but many fear the shooting could be linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI.
| I'd say the nun murder certainly is, though the Islamic Courts say warlords bumped her off for their own nefarious purposes. |
Somali Foreign Minister Ismail Mohamed Hurre said the government believes the nun's killing and Monday's car bomb have "the hallmarks of al-Qaeda."
| I'd call both the nun's murder and the car boom more up the alley of the Islamic courts. They bumped a kid off yesterday for watching a soccer match, and they'd certainly be happy to count coup on a fearsome enemy like a 65-year-old nun. The car boom's a fairly standard move in Islamic diplomacy. |
The terror organization's leader, Osama bin Laden, has called Somalia a battleground in his war on the West. "Osama bin Laden has made it clear he wants to do harm to the government and to the president in particular," Hurre told The Associated Press in Nairobi, Kenya. He also said the government believes the same people were responsible for both attacks. He did not elaborate. |