At least 15 people were killed and 38 wounded on Tuesday when a blast hit a stadium in Mogadishu where Somalia’s transitional prime minister was addressing a large crowd, police and witnesses said.
Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, making his first visit to the capital itself since taking office last year in the lawless Horn of Africa country run by rival warlords for more than a decade, was unhurt by the explosion.
He appeared to want to continue speaking but was whisked away from the site by his security team, according to an AFP correspondent on the scene.
Several thousand Somalis who were listening to the speech fled the stadium in panic as the dead and wounded, several of whom suffered serious injuries, were taken to local hospitals, police and witnesses said.
Shoes and other personal effects were left scattered about the stadium in the aftermath of the explosion that went off near some of Gedi’s bodyguards, witnesses said.
The blast occurred on the fourth day of Gedi’s maiden tour of the capital, aimed at building support for his government and ending a bitter dispute over when and where in Somalia it should relocate from exile in Kenya.
Shortly after the explosion, Gedi vowed that the attack will not dampen his resolve to secure a lasting peace in the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation, which has been without a functioning central government for 14 years.
”Our determination to achieve peace will not be overshadowed by incidents of violence like this one,” he told reporters at a hastily arranged news conference.
”There are some elements who are against the achievements we have reached in the peace process,” Gedi said, without specifically laying blame for the explosion.
”I am asking all Somalis to defend the achievements of this peace process, which has resulted in the formation of a government,” he said.
Moments before the explosion, Gedi had told the crowd at the stadium that he is willing to drop controversial plans to move the government to the town of Baidoa or Jowhar if security in Mogadishu is enhanced.
”We will relocate to Mogadishu if security improves,” he said. ”The security situation is the most important thing.”
Since arriving on Friday with a team of African Union and Arab League diplomats, Gedi has held talks with at least 70 Somali lawmakers, ministers and warlords who have been trying to agree on how to pacify the about 15 000 heavily armed militia fighters who rule the capital.
On Sunday, he appealed to warlords to withdraw gunmen from Mogadishu to allow his government to move there from Nairobi and operate safely.
The warlords have been reluctant to withdraw their fighters from the capital in the past and are now sceptical of the planned deployment of a regional peacekeeping force intended to help the transitional government get a foothold.
Under an AU mandate, the seven-member East African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development is to soon begin deploying as many as 10 000 peacekeepers.
Ugandan and Sudanese troops at the vanguard of the mission are expected to start arriving in Somalia in the coming weeks.
In March, controversy over the relocation plans and the composition of the peacekeeping forces resulted in a fight between Somali lawmakers.
Bullet-scarred Mogadishu has been a hub of instability in Somalia, which was plunged into anarchy after the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohammed Siad Barre. — Sapa-AFP