Somali Islamists deny responsibility for deadly bombing

MOGADISHU (AFP) – Somalia's hardline Islamist insurgents denied Friday that they carried out a suicide bomb attack in Mogadishu that killed at least 23 people, including three government ministers.

A bomber reportedly dressed as a woman carried out the attack at a medical student graduation ceremony in a Mogadishu hotel, which also killed three journalists and left dozens of people injured.

The international community condemned the attack, which dealt an unprecedented blow to Somalia's feeble transitional government, and President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed blamed it on the Islamist insurgency.

But the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab movement and its Hezb al-Islam allies, who have waged a relentless guerrilla war against the government since May, denied any involvement in the bombing.

"We have heard about that tragedy from the media. On behalf of the Shebab, we are not in any way involved in that incident," top spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said in a statement.

Hezb al-Islam leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys condemned the attack, charging the suicide bomber must have been a foreigner.

"I condemn this attack, which is the work of the enemy, and I send my condolences to the family members of those who were killed," he told AFP in a telephone interview.

"This was the work of enemies who want to destroy Somalia's intelligentsia and create a hostile atmosphere in which Somalis cannot reconcile," Aweys added.

Although not the deadliest attack in Mogadishu, the suicide bombing sent shockwaves across the civilian population, the government and the international community.

Hundreds of people were gathered inside the Shamo hotel for a rare celebration in a country which has experienced 18 years of almost uninterrupted civil chaos.

The blast ripped through the crowd, killing the ministers of education, higher education and health.

A medic at Mogadishu's Medina hospital said that, in addition to the dead counted on Thursday, three wounded had since died of their injuries and one more civilian victim was found, raising the death toll to 23.

Three journalists were also among the victims, bringing to nine the number of reporters killed in the restive Horn of Africa country this year alone. An AFP photographer sustained slight injuries.

"We were waiting outside the conference room when there was a huge explosion. I found myself on the ground in the middle of the smoke and screaming," the photographer said.

"I went to get my camera, and that's when I saw the bodies of the three ministers."

Shebab and Hezb al-Islam have so far focused their armed effort on attacking government troops and African Union peacekeepers, whom they accuse of spearheading a Western-backed Christian crusade in Somalia.

In his reaction to the bombing, the Shebab spokesman insinuated that the attack was the result of quarrels within the transitional government, caused notably by the reported imminent sacking of senior security officials.

Somalis held a rare street protest after Friday prayers in the central town of Dhusamareb to condemn the attack.

Residents told AFP that hundreds turned out for the demonstration, which was organised by Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa, a moderate Sufi organisation opposed to hardline Islamists.

"Today we are here to show solidarity with the innocent civilians killed in Mogadishu yesterday," a spokesman for the group, Sheikh Abdullahi Abdurahman Abu Yusuf, told the demonstrators.

"We condemn this barbaric act and call upon the Somali people to stand together to fight those enemies who attacked their children," he added.

A joint statement from the European Union, the InterGovernmental Authority on Development, a regional body, the League of Arab States, the United Nations and the United States condemned the attack as "cowardly acts of terrorism".