By Alisha Ryu Nairobi29 October 2008
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An unprecedented wave of suicide car bombings killed and wounded scores of people across northern Somalia on Wednesday as regional leaders met in Nairobi to discuss ways of ending the violence in the Horn of African country. As VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu reports from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi, the bombings in the regions of Somaliland and Puntland are the first of their kind outside of southern Somalia.
The larger of the two attacks took place in Hargeisa city in the breakaway republic of Somaliland around 10 o'clock in the morning.
Civilians help a wounded man in Hergeisa, after a series of bombings in the breakaway republic of Somaliland, 29 Oct. 2008Three separate explosions ripped through the presidential palace, a building housing the United Nations Development Program, and the Ethiopian embassy. All three buildings are located in the same neighborhood.In a statement to the media, UNDP confirmed that its office in Hargeisa had been struck by a suicide bomber, who forced his explosive-laden car into the compound and then detonated. It is not yet known how many people were killed and wounded there, but witnesses said nearly two dozen people may have been killed by the suicide bombing at the Ethiopian mission.
VOA was not able to reach government officials in Somaliland for comment, but witnesses said the president's residence also took a direct hit and many people near the palace were injured by flying debris. Almost at the same time, nearly a dozen soldiers in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland were wounded when two suicide bombers drove their cars into a security compound operated by the intelligence service in the port city of Bosasso.An official at Puntland's interior ministry, Colonel Abshir Abdi Jama, told VOA that he believes all five bombings were planned and carried out by the militant Islamist Shabab group, an al-Qaida-affiliated group which once formed the military wing of Somalia's Islamic Courts Union. In late 2006, Ethiopia intervened in Somalia, with U.S. support, to oust the Shabab and the courts from power.
Earlier this year, the United States put the Shabab on its list of terrorist organizations. Colonel Jama said, "The Shabab, I think they send a message to the Nairobi meeting."Jama was referring to a meeting of a regional bloc known as the Inter-governmental Authority on Development, which began Tuesday in the Kenyan capital. The leaders of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda held talks with leaders of Somalia's transitional federal government and members of a moderate opposition faction to discuss reconciliation and power-sharing.
Somalia's MP delegation listens to speeches at a Nairobi meeting with regional heads of state to discuss Somalia's crisis, 29 Oct. 2008The Nairobi meeting follows a U.N.-sponsored deal signed on Sunday in Djibouti between the government and the opposition group. It calls for a cease-fire to be observed starting next Wednesday and for Ethiopian troops protecting the Somali interim government to move out of Mogadishu and the garrison town of Beletweyn near the Ethiopian border.
The two Somali rivals are to also form a 10,000-member joint security force to help African Union peacekeepers secure the capital Mogadishu and other areas of Somalia after Ethiopia relocates its troops.The Shabab, which has rejected previous peace proposals, has condemned the deal, saying the group will not stop fighting until Ethiopia withdraws all of its troops from Somali soil.An associate professor at the University of South Africa, Iqbal Jhazbay, said he agrees the Shabab most likely planned and carried out the attacks. He said the militants are probably also receiving indirect support from a variety of Somali groups united in their hatred of Ethiopia and in what they view as external interference in Somali affairs.
He added, "Whoever has undertaken these attacks are aware that the government in Hargeisa has very close security as well as diplomatic relations with Ethiopia. The build-up of western forces, coupled with Russia and NATO along the coast of Puntland could have also prompted it [the attacks]. And also opponents of the TFG [transitional federal government] would also want to send a signal that they plan to continue this resistance." Suicide bombings are rare in Somalia. The handful that have been carried out previously have occurred in towns in the southern part of the country.
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