11 killed in Somali president assassination attempt

Somalia’s president narrowly escaped an assassination attempt today when a car bomb exploded outside the parliament building in the city of Baidoa, but the blast and a subsequent gunbattle left 11 people dead, officials said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which killed the president’s brother but it will certainly aggravate tensions between the virtually powerless government and an Islamic militia that has seized control of much of southern Somalia.

Somali Foreign Minister Ismail Mohamed Hurre said he could not “rule out or rule in” the Islamic group, whose leaders swiftly denied having anything to do with the attack.

“The perpetrators of the Baidoa blast are enemies of Somali people and Islamic courts have no hand in it,” said Abdirahman Mudey, a spokesman for the Islamic group.

The bomb exploded outside the parliament building where President Abdullahi Yusuf had given a speech just 10 minutes before, said Mohamed Adawe, a journalist who witnessed the blast.

The president’s bodyguards chased the suspected bombers, killing six of them in a gunbattle. The five other victims were in the president’s convoy.

Two people were arrested, Hurre said. He had no details on the suspects.

“This explosion was intended to kill the president, but he escaped and he is safe,” government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said. Eight cars were burned in the explosion, including three that were in the president’s convoy.

The blast came one day after a nun was gunned down outside a hospital where she worked in the capital, Mogadishu, about 150 miles from Baidoa. Many fear the shooting could be linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI.

Last week, the pope quoted a medieval text that characterised some of the teachings of Islam’s founder as “evil and inhuman".

Hurre said the government believes the nun’s murder and the car bomb have “the hallmarks of al-Qaida,” whose leader Osama bin Laden has called Somalia a battleground in his war on the United States.

“Osama bin Laden has made it clear he wants to do harm to the government and to the president in particular,” Hurre told The Associated Press. He also said the government believes the same people were responsible for both attacks. He did not elaborate.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, pulling the country into anarchy.

The current government was established two years ago with the support of the United Nations, but it has failed to assert any power outside its base in Baidoa.

The Islamic group, which is accused of having ties to al-Qaida, has all but wrested control from the weak and factional Somali government. With it has come a hard-line Taliban-style rule complete with public floggings and executions.

Peace talks between the government and the Islamic group were to resume on October 30 in Khartoum, Sudan. Earlier this month, the two sides agreed to eventually form a unified national army – a rare and significant accord.