The Somali government on Tuesday appealed for international help to investigate a failed bid to assassinate President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, blamed on the al-Qaeda network, which killed 11 people.
As authorities interrogated two suspects arrested after the country’s first-ever suicide bombing, government spokesperson Abdirahman Mohamed Nur Dinari said they needed foreign expertise to investigate the attack outside the Parliament building in Baidoa.
”Our local investigators are already probing the attack, but we really need international help and expertise on the whole exercise,” Dinari said.
”Since al-Qaeda was involved in the attack, we really do not have the expertise to uncover the whole attack that was well organised by the same groups that are carrying out attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the spokesperson for the country’s interim government added.
Suicide bombers blew up two cars on Monday as Yusuf’s convoy was leaving Parliament, killing five members of his entourage, including his younger brother Abdulsalam, and six presumed attackers.
At least 18 people, including nine presidential guards, were wounded in the deadly raid in the provincial town of Baidoa, about 250km north-west of the Islamist-held capital of Mogadishu, according to government officials.
Dinari said the government had deployed massive security in the township, and in outlying areas police officers were scouring villages in search of suspects believed to be still at large.
”We have deployed more security officers to patrol within a radius of about 150km from Baidoa as we try to ease tension,” he added.
Late on Monday, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi blamed the attack on ”terrorists” organised within the lawless country that has been wracked by anarchy and without a functioning central administration for the past 16 years.
The premier said that in addition to the two under arrest, others were being pursued while Foreign Minister Ismail Mohamed Hurre told reporters in Kenya the incident was linked to the weekend murder of an Italian nun in Mogadishu.
He was referring to the killing on Sunday of Sister Leonella Sgorbati (65), who was gunned down by two men at a charity hospital in the capital amid fury over Pope Benedict XVI’s comments last week about Islam.
Officials from the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), which seized much of southern Somalia, including Mogadishu in June, have also condemned the attempt on Yusuf’s life as well as the slaying of the nun, for which one suspect is in custody.
Witnesses said the attack began when a car exploded outside the Parliament building, sending a huge fireball into the sky and killing five people. Six suspected assassins were then shot dead in a gun battle with security forces.
Despite an interim peace accord reached this month in Khartoum, the interim government and Islamist leaders are deeply divided over several key issues, notably the proposed deployment of a nearly 8 000-strong regional peacekeeping force the Islamists have vowed to fight.
The government has renewed the appeal for the deployment of peacekeepers despite opposition from the Islamists.
”This attack will perhaps make the world understand that it needs to urgently deploy peacekeepers,” Dinari explained.
Yusuf’s government is the latest in more than a dozen attempts to restore stability. But since it was set up two years ago, it has been wracked by infighting and there have been two unsuccessful attempts to kill Gedi.
The rising influence of the Islamists, who are accused of having links with terrorism groups, has raised concerns that Somalia is becoming a haven for extremists. — Sapa-AFP