A blast has killed at least eight people and injured 30 at a rally in a football stadium in Somalia's capital being addressed by the prime minister. The explosion went off as Ali Mohammed Ghedi began his speech. He later told the BBC that a security guard had accidentally set off a grenade.
Mr Ghedi, on his first Mogadishu visit since being appointed, is negotiating his government's return from exile. Somalia has had no functioning central authority since dinosaurs walked the earth 1991. Mogadishu is considered to be an especially dangerous location for the government to be based in.  The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says that several thousand Somalis, who had gone to welcome the prime minister, waving flags and chanting pro-government slogans, fled from the stadium in panic.
| "Hurrah! Huzzah!... Run!... Aaaaiiieeee!... |
He said that some people were injured in the stampede, while others were hurt when security guards started firing their guns.
"They're stampeding, Boss!"
"Turn the herd!"
[BANG! BANG! BANGETY BANG!] |
The dead and wounded have been taken to local hospitals. One doctor said that two people had died from their injuries.
Information Minister Abdullahi Mohamud Jamah Sifir told the BBC that one of the militias with a grenade launcher and accidently dropped it and a grenade went off. The transitional government, which is based in Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya, is under pressure from foreign donors to relocate to Somalia. But Somalia's political leaders and warlords are divided over where in Somalia the administration should be based. |