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| Africa Horn |
| Somalia death toll rises to 30, suspect arrested |
| 2008-10-31 |
| North Somali authorities said on Thursday they had arrested a prominent local sheikh suspected of involvement in a wave of suicide attacks that killed at least 30 people. There was still no claim of responsibility for the five bombs in Puntland and Somaliland regions on Wednesday. But suspicion has fallen on local insurgents fighting the Somali government and its Ethiopian military allies. The United States blamed al Qaeda, which it says works through the local Islamist militant group al Shabaab, for the attacks, which overshadowed a regional heads-of-state meeting in Kenya to discuss the 17-year-long conflict in Somalia. Medical staff in Bosasso port, in semi-autonomous Puntland, said two soldiers wounded by one of the car bombs, at an intelligence headquarters, had died overnight, bringing to at least five the victims of that strike. Authorities in the Somali breakaway region of Puntland said Thursday they believed the two suicide bombers who struck anti-terrorism centres a day earlier had been trained by Al-Qaeda. "The attackers were trained by Al-Qaeda, according to the evidence we have collected, but investigations are still under way," Puntland presidential advisor Bile Mohamoud Qabowsade told. |
| Posted by:Fred |