MOGADISHU, 4 May 2005 — At least 15 people were killed and nearly 40 wounded yesterday in a bomb blast at a Mogadishu stadium where Somalia’s transitional prime minister was addressing a large crowd, police and hospital officials said.
Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, on his first visit to the capital itself since taking office last year, was unhurt by the explosion that occurred just about eight meters from where he was speaking, they said.
Officials close to Gedi said the bomb, initially reported to have been a grenade, detonated while in the possession of a bodyguard of a senior local militia commander but it was unclear if it had been intentional.
The bodyguard was among those killed in the blast but the officials said they could not immediately determine whether the prime minister had been the target of a suicide bombing or even an assassination attempt.
“It was not a hand grenade, it was a bomb,” one senior Somali official said. “We’re not ruling out anything, including whether the prime minister was target.”
Gedi appeared to want to keep speaking after the explosion but was whisked away from the site by his security team, according to an AFP correspondent on the scene. Several thousand Somalis who were listening to the speech fled the stadium in panic as the dead and wounded, several of whom suffered serious injuries, were taken to local hospitals, police and witnesses said.
Abdi Hassan, a senior Mogadishu police official, told AFP that at least eight people had died in the blast and that several of the wounded had been seriously injured. “At least eight of them are in very critical condition,” he said. Nursess in Mogadishu’s Madinah and Al-Hayat hospitals said seven more died, bringing the toll to 15.
“Three more people died here while they were undergoing treatment while four others are in a critical condition,” a nurse at Madinah Hospital told AFP.
At the nearby Al-Hayat clinic, four other people succumbed to internal injuries and bleeding, a medical official said. They said at least 38 people had been treated in the hospitals with fairly serious wounds.
