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| Africa Horn |
| Roadside bomb kills four soldiers in Mogadishu |
| 2008-06-23 |
| (Xinhua) -- At least four Somali government soldiers were killed and four civilians were wounded after a roadside hit a military vehicle in southwest of the capital, Mogadishu, witnesses and local media reports said. The explosion ripped through a government military truck as it passed through a street in Darkinley district, killing four of the soldiers on board and wounded four civilians standing by the street, witnesses confirmed to Xinhua. Local media reported the same figures, adding that Somali government security forces cordoned off the area of the blast and carried out searches for suspected insurgents. The vehicle was completely burnt by the huge blast that rocked the southwestern part of the capital where many of the residents sought refuge as it was relatively calmer than other areas of the Mogadishu. Somali government officials were not readily available for comment on the latest attack and no group has so far claimed responsibility for the blast but insurgents opposed to the government and the presence of foreign forces in Somalia carry out near daily attacks on Somali and Ethiopian troops. The Somali transitional government and the a faction of the opposition coalition, the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia(ARS), signed a peace deal early this month but another faction of ARS and the hard-line Islamist group Al-shabaab boycotted the talks in Djibouti and rejected the agreement reached there. They vowed to continue their fight against Somali government security forces and the Ethiopian troops backing them. Under the agreement Ethiopian troops would withdraw in 120 days after the deployment of "a sufficient number of UN force." |
| Posted by:Fred |