At least two people were killed and 21 injured on Friday when four blasts, described by police as “criminal acts”, rocked Addis Ababa, the latest in a series of mystery explosions in the country.
Two people died and seven were hurt, five seriously and two slightly, when a device exploded at a cafe in the capital’s north-west Mercato district, the city’s largest market, they said.
Another 14 people were hurt in three earlier separate blasts — two in the northern Piazza commercial district and one on a bus near a station in western Addis Ababa — that started in the pre-dawn hours, police said.
“These explosions are criminal acts,” said Demsach Hailu of the Ethiopian Federal Police. “The exact make-up of the bombs is under investigation.”
The last and most damaging explosion took place at the Cafe Amico in the crowded Mercato around 9.40am local time, where a number of people were sipping mid-morning coffee, he told Agence France-Presse.
“Two people have been killed, five people are badly wounded and two others are suffering from light injuries,” Demsach said of the cafe blast.
In Piazza, police said, two blasts caused minor damage at adjacent buildings housing offices of the national flag-carrier Ethiopian Airlines and the Ethiopian Electric Power Cooperation.
The first, at about 4am local time at the airline office shattered windows, and glass littered the area around the building, according to an AFP correspondent on the scene.
“No one was around, so there were no injuries,” said a police official at the site.
The second explosion occurred around 9.30am inside a nearby building housing the power company, where police said one person was slightly injured.
Details were sketchy about the blast near the bus station on the road to Jima in western Addis Ababa, but diplomats said a bus had been targeted in the explosion, which seriously injured two passengers.
The blasts were the latest in more than a dozen to have hit Addis Ababa and provincial towns since January, killing at least seven people.
In early April, at least six people were killed and dozens wounded when grenades exploded in bars and a market in towns in eastern and western Ethiopia.
Addis Ababa has been hit by at least 11 explosions, some attributed to grenades and others to land mines, since January, including a series of five on one day in March that killed one person on a bus and wounded 15.
No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts but Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said the material for the explosives has come from arch-rival neighbour Eritrea, a charge denied by Eritrean authorities.
Other officials have blamed separatist rebels, Somali Muslim extremists and opposition groups, which the government has accused of trying to foment a coup after disputed elections last year.
Tension has been high in Addis Ababa for months since at least 84 people died — many at the hands of police — during opposition-led protests against alleged fraud in the May 2005 election. — AFP