Somalia: Roadside bomb kills 20 civilians in Mogadishu

(SomaliNet) A roadside bomb in Somali capital Mogadishu has killed at least 20 civilians, among them a group of woman street sweepers who were \"torn to pieces,\" according to witnesses and medics,

\"They were cleaning the street when this huge explosion rocked the entire neighbourhood,\" witness Hasan Abdi Mohamed said.

\"I counted 15 bodies, most of them of women who were torn to pieces.\"

Witnesses say more than 40 people were wounded.

Another witness, Ali Hasan Adan, also counted 15 women who were dead.

\"From what I can see, they are women who were cleaning the area. There is blood everywhere, dead and wounded people strewn across the street.\"

At the city\'s main Madina hospital, a doctor, Dahir Mohamed Mohamoud, said five of the people brought in had died of their injuries, taking the death toll to at least 20.

\"We received 47 civilians who were injured in the blast and so far five have died in the hospital, three of them women,\" Mohamoud said.

\"It\'s the largest number of civilians we have received from one incident in weeks.\"

At the hospital, Shamso Mumin discovered her sister was among the victims.

\"My sister leaves three orphans behind,\" Mumin said, sobbing.

\"She had been doing this kind of work for three months, but now she has lost everything, she has lost her life.\"

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion, but hardline Islamist groups routinely plant roadside bombs targeting military convoys.

Meanwhile Ethiopian troops came to the rescue of Somalia\'s embattled and internationally-backed transitional government in late 2006, ousting an Islamist militia that had briefly controlled large parts of the country.

Islamist fighters have since waged a guerrilla war against the government, Ethiopian soldiers and African Union peacekeepers.

Civilians have borne the brunt of the fighting, with international rights groups and aid agencies saying at least 6 000 have been killed and hundreds of thousands more displaced in the past year alone.-Cape Times