Islamist rebels attack Somali government HQ
BAIDOA, Somalia (Reuters) - Heavily armed Islamist rebelshave attacked the presidential palace and key installations inthe Somali government's Baidoa headquarters, killing at leastfour soldiers, officials said on Tuesday.
Witnesses said mortar bombs fired by the insurgents late onMonday also hit the airport and a large refurbished warehousethat serves as the parliament of the Western-backed interimadministration.
"Several mortar shells landed on us, killing three troops,"Ibrahim Ali Isak, a guard at Baidoa's high-walled presidentialpalace, said by telephone.
Seven of his colleagues were injured and taken to hospital,where medical sources said one of them died.
The attack was carried out by militants of the al-Shabaab,which the United States has listed as a terrorist organisation.
A spokesman for the rebels, Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, toldReuters their target was the presidential guards and Ethiopianforces supporting the interim government.
Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein told reporters inAddis Ababa on Monday that the international community mustdeploy U.N. peacekeepers in his country without delay, or riskworsening insecurity across the Horn of Africa.
He said the U.N. troops were needed to replace Ethiopiansoldiers, under the terms of a tentative peace deal reachedwith some of the opposition last month at U.N.-led talks inDjibouti.
DENIAL
The al-Shabaab is the armed wing of an Islamist groupousted by the government and Ethiopians at the start of lastyear. Along with other opposition hardliners, it has criticisedthe Djibouti deal, which has done little to stop bloodshed inSomalia.
The latest high profile victim was Osman Ali Ahmed, localcountry director of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), whowas killed by unidentified gunmen in Mogadishu on Sunday.
Robow told Reuters al-Shabaab fighters were not to blame.
"We strongly condemn the killing of important people in ourcommunity and declare that we are not behind it," he said. "Webelieve Ethiopian troops and the government are behind it."
Government officials and the Ethiopian military could notimmediately be reached for comment.
The assassination of the U.N. official has raised fearsamong aid workers, who say worsening insecurity has stoppedthem from reaching many victims in a humanitarian crisis thatmay be the worst in Africa.
Fighting has killed more than 8,600 civilians since earlylast year, local rights activists say, and a million people outof population of 9 million have been forced from their homes.
Somalia has had no central rule and has been in a state ofnear-perpetual conflict since the 1991 toppling of a dictator.
(Writing by Guled Mohamed; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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