Witnesses: about 40 Somalis killed in 2 attacks

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN | August 15, 2008

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Separate attacks with roadside bombs struck near a presidential motorcade and a military convoy in Somalia's capital region Friday, causing soldiers to open fire, witnesses said.

About 40 people were killed, the witnesses said, but they could not say how many died from explosions and how many from gunfire.

The reports could not be confirmed with Somali officials, the insurgency or Ethiopian military officials. Somali officials rarely confirm death tolls and their Ethiopian allies never speak to the media.

The bloodshed occurred a day before the scheduled beginning of talks between Somalia's president and his estranged prime minister whose protracted power struggle complicated government efforts to deal with an expanding Islamic insurgency in this Horn of Africa nation.

In the first attack, a witness said two roadside bombs exploded near the presidential convoy as it traveled to the Mogadishu airport and soldiers started shooting.

The witness, Farah Daud, said his father and four people were killed. He did not know if anyone in the convoy was hurt or whether President Abdullahi Yusuf was in any of the vehicles.

In a separate incident, witnesses said bombs targeted a convoy carrying Ethiopian soldiers on the road between Mogadishu and the town of Afgoye. Those soldiers fired at nearby traffic and refugee camps, the witnesses said.

One witness, Ali Jama, said he counted 35 dead. Sahra Nor Osma, who fled the scene with her two children, said she believed there were more than 30 bodies in the street.

"Ethiopian convoys opened fire into different areas where thousands of displaced people were living. They killed everyone on the road," she said.

Another witness, Muse Mohamed, said the soldiers' shooting killed a 2-year-old child and seven women in two minibuses traveling behind the convoy. "Blood was pouring out of the buses," Fadumo Kheyre said.

Mohamud Mayow, a nurse at Afgoye Hospital, said 20 people had been admitted with wounds after the attack and two of those died.

Thousands of Somalis have been killed since Islamic fighters began an Iraq-style insurgency in December 2006, after they were driven from power in Mogadishu and much of the south by Ethiopian troops helping the U.N.-backed transitional government.

The impoverished country has been at war since 1991, when clan-based militias ousted a socialist dictator and then fought for power among themselves.