Somali police seek first suicide bombing mastermind

By Hassan Yare | September 19, 2006

Yusuf blamed al Qaeda for the attack, which killed five people including his brother outside parliament in the town 240 km (150 miles) from the capital Mogadishu. Six attackers were killed in a firefight with Yusuf's bodyguards after the blast.

Officials said despite 15 years of clan-based fighting, the Monday attack raised fears that Somalia was facing a new kind of violence with the unprecedented suicide bombing.

One witness said the body of the suspected suicide bomber and the charred wreckage of seven cars were still visible outside the parliament, a converted grain store.

Christian-led Ethiopia, which fears a hardline Muslim state on its doorstep, on Tuesday condemned the attack and said it would do "whatever is necessary" to ensure the Addis Ababa-backed government could function.

"This act is intended to wreak havoc and bring more instability not only to Somalia and its fledgling Transitional Federal Institutions, but also to the entire region of Horn of Africa," an Ethiopian foreign affairs ministry statement said.

The E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana also condemned the attack, saying it was aimed at the Somali peace process, while Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari urged foreign countries to help with the police investigation.

"We are very concerned because this is the first time ever that we are seeing suicide bombing in our country," Dinari told Reuters. "I appeal to the international community to support the transitional federal government to investigate this bombing."

"EVIL ACT"

Witnesses said the government had tightened security, with police stopping cars at checkpoints around Yusuf's official residence, the airport and government buildings.

Yusuf told the BBC Somali service the attackers rammed a car packed with explosives into his convoy but he escaped.

Ibrahim Shino, the deputy governor of Somalia's Bay region, where Baidoa is located said that while investigations were ongoing, the attack pointed to people linked to powerful Islamists who pose a challenge to the interim government.

"This evil act was organized by people linked to the Islamic Courts in Mogadishu. We have never seen such a coordinated attack in Baidoa," he told a press conference.

The government, based in Baidoa because it is too weak to return to Mogadishu, has avoided directly blaming Islamists who seized the capital from U.S.-backed warlords in June and control a large swathe of southern Somalia.

Both sides have held peace talks in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, pledging to work together and form a joint military.

The Islamists blamed outside interference for the bomb attack and singled out Ethiopia, which witnesses and regional experts say has deployed troops to Somalia to protect the internationally recognized government now in its second year.

"The enemies of peace in Somalia, such as Ethiopia, will benefit from this," senior Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed told Reuters in Djibouti. "We're not promoting any violence."

Somalia descended into lawlessness in 1991 when warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. The country's 14th attempt at central administration since the ouster has been stymied by infighting and the newly empowered Islamists.

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(Additional reporting by Omar Jamal in Djibouti and Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa)