Thursday, July 05, 2007
AFP Photo: UN Humanitarian Coordinator Eric Laroche (L) speaks with Mayor of Mogadishu, Mohamed Omar Habeb, June...
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Mogadishu Mayor Mohamed Omar Habeb narrowly escaped a roadside bomb explosion targeting his convoy in the capital's northern Shibis neighbourhood, police said.
"It was a roadside bomb planted near the street. It exploded when the last vehicle of a convoy escorting the mayor passed through the area and no one was hurt," police officer Abdullahi Ali Mohamed told AFP.
"The bomb ... destroyed a building close to the explosion site but I haven't seen any casualties. The mayor and his escorts have escaped," eyewitness Muktar Mohamed told AFP.
"We heard a heavy explosion around 8:45 in the evening (1745 GMT). It was dark in the area and none of us could go outside, but the explosion shocked everybody in my house," Hussein Mohieddin, a local resident, told AFP.
He said the explosion was caused by a hand grenade hurled against the minister's residence.
Government officials confirmed the attack but said Dhimbil was not at home at the time. Somali and Ethiopian forces sealed an area in the southern Mogadishu to investigate the attack.
Four policemen and a civilian were also wounded in a grenade attack against a police station in the capital's southern neighbourhood of Waberi, police sources said.
The mayor had announced on Wednesday that police reinforcements had been deployed across Mogadishu in a bid to secure the violence-ridden city.
"Three thousand police are deployed in the capital to support the current officers securing the Somali capital. The forces are handed over to Mogadishu regional police command," Habeb said.
The stepped-up efforts to stem a spate of attacks against government officials and forces, as well as the Ethiopian and African Union troops supporting them, come a week ahead of a planned national reconciliation conference.
The key meeting, which is expected to bring some 1,300 delegates from feuding Somali factions together, is scheduled for July 15 after being delayed several times due to insufficient funds and relentless violence.
Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre touched off a bloody power struggle that has defied numerous attempts to restore stability.
Source: AFP, July 05, 20077