NAIROBI, 5 May 2005 — Tuesday’s deadly blast in a Mogadishu stadium was the result of an apparent failed attempt to assassinate transitional Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, diplomatic sources said yesterday.

The sources said the explosion that killed at least 15 people was not an accident and occurred when guards stopped an as yet unidentified militiaman from throwing a hand grenade as the prime minister was delivering a speech.

Gedi and other officials have said the blast was unintentional and caused by the accidental detonation of an explosive by a local militia commander’s bodyguard, but the sources who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said that version of events was being used to allay public fears and prevent panic.

One source who was in Somalia at the time of the blast, said diplomats had been told by one of Gedi’s close advisors that the would-be attacker, who died in the explosion, had been stopped from throwing the grenade.

“We were not in the stadium at the exact moment of the explosion ... but a little afterward, when we were about to leave Mogadishu, one of (Gedi’s) advisers told us that it had been an attempted attack,” the source said.

“A man had taken out a grenade but was immediately restrained by nearby militiamen,” the source said. “He died in the explosion.”

In addition to the dead, about 38 people were injured in the blast that occurred on the fourth day of Gedi’s maiden tour of the capital aimed at building support for his government and ending a bitter dispute over when and where in Somalia it should relocate from exile in Kenya.

While visiting the wounded in a Mogadishu hospital, Gedi repeated his assertion that the blast had been unintentional.

“I came to the conclusion that I was not a target of any attack,” he told reporters. “This is purely an accident and ... I repeat that the version of an attempt on my life is not true.”

Despite Gedi’s insistence that the explosion was accidental, Abdi Hassan Awale, a senior Somali police official told AFP that the cause was still being probed. “Investigations are going on, nothing can be ruled out,” he said.