JEDDAH/BAIDOA, 19 September 2006 — At least 11 people, including six alleged assailants, were killed in the Somali town of Baidoa yesterday in an unsuccessful bid to assassinate the country’s interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf.
A car bomb killed five people and wounded several others outside Parliament in Somalia’s provincial capital Baidoa. Six attackers were killed in a gunbattle with Yusuf’s bodyguards after the blast, Foreign Minister Ismail Hurre Buba told a news conference in Nairobi.
“A car exploded when the president’s convoy was passing on the way to his residence,” Hurre said. “It was an assassination attempt on the president.” Yusuf escaped unharmed but Hurre said five people were killed in the blast. Among the dead was Yusuf’s brother, Abdulsalam Yusuf Ahmed.
Hurre said the attack bore the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda. “It was characteristically an Al-Qaeda-type attempt with an explosion taking place through remote control,” he said.
He also linked yesterday’s violence to the murder on Sunday of an Italian nun shot in Mogadishu. “We think that the attempt in Baidoa is associated with the assassination of the Italian nun. Whoever was behind that is behind this,” he told a news conference in Nairobi.
However, Interior Minister Hussein Mohamed Farah Aideed said it was too soon to point the finger at any group. He added that security forces arrested two of the attackers.
“Such assassination attempts will only spread lawlessness,” said Abdullah Elmi, a long time resident of Jeddah who works as a taxi driver. “This has come at a time when we were hoping to have a semblance of order and peace in the country,” he added.
Echoing his sentiments, Jama Hashi, a middle-aged hospital employee, said the bomb that was targeted at the president had all the bearings of an Al-Qaeda design. “They have training bases in Somalia and want the country to be plunged into further chaos,” he said, adding that it will definitely derail the peace process if the attempt is blamed on the Islamists. The government is desperately making a bid to bring around all “moderate” elements.
He emphasized that the Islamists and the government had two rounds of talks in Khartoum with a view to forming a joint military force.
“I don’t believe in the theory that Islamists are behind he attack,” Muhammad Sheikh, an employee at a Sitteen Street restaurant in Jeddah said. “It looks like the handiwork of the so-called government as there is a lot of tussle for power.”
The attack is sure to heighten tensions in the volatile nation of 10 million, between the internationally recognized but weak government and Islamists who control Mogadishu and a large swathe of southern Somalia.
“It will jeopardize the peace process if it becomes very obvious that the Islamists are behind this terrorist act,” Hurre said.
Islamist officials condemned the attempt on Yusuf’s life. “We very much condemn the deaths of the people in Baidoa,” Abdurahim Ali Muddey, a spokesman for the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), said in Mogadishu. “Those who carried out this attack are the enemies of Somalia.”
