Somali PM unhurt, 7 killed in soccer stadium blast

MOGADISHU - An explosion killed at least seven people at a soccer stadium in Somalia's capital on Tuesday, just moments after the prime minister had addressed hundreds of supporters, government officials and witnesses said.

Prime Minister Ali Gedi, who escaped unhurt, told reporters in Mogadishu the blast appeared to have been an accident. A security official said a militiaman guarding Gedi had detonated one of his grenades.

"I am very sorry for what happened at the stadium. It is an unexpected accident and I send condolences to the relatives," Gedi said.

Gedi flew to Mogadishu on Friday for the first time since his appointment last year, seeking to end a rift in his government over the location of a future capital and the role of UN peacekeepers in the Horn of Africa country of about 10 million people.

Lawlessness has continued to plague Mogadishu despite the formation of President Abdullahi Yusuf's Transitional Federal Government in neighboring Kenya last year - the 14th attempt at government in nearly as many years.

Col. Abdi Hassan Awale, the police chief in the last government who is working with Gedi's security officials, said seven people were killed in the blast.

Witnesses and hospital officials said three others died on their way to or at the hospital and another was killed by a vehicle leaving the scene.

BLOOD EVERYWHERE

Awale said a militiaman hired to protect Gedi's entourage appeared to have been responsible for the blast.

"It was an accident that happened after one of the private militiamen's grenades exploded," Awale told reporters at the press conference with Gedi.

Witnesses said the blast tore through a stadium wall and left blood everywhere. Officials at four hospitals said a total of 57 were wounded.

The statements by Gedi and Awale conflicted with that made by one of the prime minister's senior aides in Nairobi.

"As far as we are concerned it was a bomb. Nobody knows who did it, the reason or motivation behind it," political adviser Abdurahman Ali Osman told reporters.

"It was not an attack on the prime minister. It is just instigators who would like to see the instability of Somalia."

The new government has come under growing pressure from foreign governments and donors to return home, although the country is still a patchwork fiefdoms run by rival warlords.

The lack of safety in Mogadishu has been the main argument made by Gedi and his parliamentary allies against moving the government back to the capital.

Gedi and deputies aligned with him would prefer to first relocate from Nairobi to the relatively safer Somali cities of Jowhar and Baidoa.

But others, including influential warlords in the government, insist the administration must return to Mogadishu, Somalia's single most dangerous place. The transitional constitution stipulates that it must be the capital.

Yusuf has asked African and Arab states to supply 7,500 troops to help disarm the militiamen roaming Mogadishu since warlords overran the country in 1991, ousting military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

But militant Islamists and influential warlords have vowed to attack troops from the so-called frontline states of Kenya, Djibouti and longstanding rival Ethiopia if they are deployed.

- REUTERS