At least 42 people were injured when three blasts rocked a town in southern Ethiopia at the weekend in the latest of a series of mystery explosions to have hit the country, police said on Monday.
The simultaneous blasts hit a hotel and two restaurants in Jijiga, about 720km south-east of Addis Ababa around 7pm (4pm GMT) on Saturday, causing significant property damage and the injuries, they said.
”The explosions injured 42 people at the Central Hotel, the London Cafe and the Family Cafe,” said Jijiga deputy police commander Mohammed Hussein. ”We have not apprehended anybody but we are carrying out an investigation.”
Some of those wounded including staff at the three facilities, he said, vowing to catch ”the terrorists who are behind this barbaric act”.
A nurse at the hospital in Jijiga told local reporters that 23 of the wounded, including seven women, had been seriously wounded in the blasts.
The explosions were the most recent of more than a dozen mystery blasts to have convulsed the impoverished Horn of Africa country of about 70-million people amid heightened political tensions since the beginning of the year.
Earlier this month, nine blasts at apparantly random targets including a crowded cafe, a bus station and buses, killed at least four people and wounded more than 40 in Addis Ababa.
Those explosions brought the death toll from the series to at least 11 from blasts that have hit the capital and provincial towns since January .
No one has yet been arrested in connection with the explosions that officials have variously blamed on arch-foe Eritrea, separatist rebels, Somali Muslim extremists and opposition groups.
Political tension has been high in Ethiopia since disputed elections last year led to opposition protests that twice turned violent.
At least 84 people were killed — many shot dead by police — during demonstrations against alleged fraud in the May 2005 polls.
The protests resulted in the imprisonment of the entire leadership of the main opposition party and more than a dozen journalists on a wide range of charges including genocide, treason and conspiracy to overthrow the government. – Sapa-AFP