Wednesday, May 30, 2012
MOGADISHU (AFP) — At least six people, including three civilians, were killed Wednesday in northern Somalia's Puntland region when a roadside bomb exploded as security forces tried to defuse it.
"Three members of the security forces and three civilians were killed in the explosion," said security official Mahdi Abdulahi.
The blast occurred in the northern part of Galkayo, a town on the border separating semi-autonomous Puntland from the self-proclaimed separate region of Galmudug to the south.
"The civilians thought it was safe and they approached, but then it exploded," said Jama Alale, a grocer living nearby, adding that he had seen dead bodies with limbs ripped off by the explosion.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast, the latest in a series of attacks in the restive region controlled by various militia forces opposed to the Al-Qaeda linked Shebab rebels.
At the end of January, a suicide attack against the home of warlord and former police chief Abdi Hasan Qeybdid in Galkayo killed two people but left its intended target unharmed.
Galkayo has been the scene of clashes between rival political and clan groups in recent months.
Journalists in the city have also come under attack, with a radio reporter gunned down in early May as he headed home from work. Two months earlier a reporter at Radio Galkayo was shot dead as he returned home.
No group have claimed responsibility for those attacks.
Somalia has been without a stable central authority since the 1991 ouster of Siad Barre that sparked two decades of civil war.
Source: AFP