Suicide Bomber Misses Somalia’s Premier...Again

The NY Times is reporting that once again Somali Prime Minister Gedi has survived an assassination attempt on his life, which is at least the 3rd attempt in the past 12 months. The reason the insurgents are targeting him is because he is from the Mogadishu-dominated Hawiye clan. A majority of his own clan is against his role in the transition government, yet he has remained a strident cog in the new government. His stance is a modern 'profile in courage.'

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NAIROBI, Kenya, June 3 — A suicide bomber narrowly missed killing Somalia’s transitional prime minister on Sunday afternoon after he rammed a pickup truck packed with explosives into the gates of the prime minister’s house in Mogadishu, the capital.

The prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, who was inside at the time, was unhurt. However, the explosion killed six of his bodyguards, along with a student at a Koranic school across the street.

Witnesses said that the pickup sped through a roadblock outside Mr. Gedi’s house and that bodyguards opened fire as the truck hurtled onward. It then slammed into a set of gates just feet away from the residence and exploded in a fireball that flattened several buildings and scattered debris for blocks.

Afterward, Ugandan peacekeepers shuttled Mr. Gedi from his house to an undisclosed location. Speaking on national radio, he blamed Islamist militants for the violence.

“These cowards, they’re trying to sabotage our government,” he said. “But we won’t stop our mission to stabilize this country and defeat them.”

Mr. Gedi said the pickup was able to sail through the checkpoints outside his home because it was carrying men dressed in government army uniforms.

“My security guards thought these guys were friends,” he said.

The authorities did not say how many attackers died.

According to Somali security officials, remnants of the Islamist forces that briefly ruled Somalia last year are regrouping and changing their tactics from conventional warfare to terrorist strikes. In December, Ethiopian forces routed the Islamists and helped install Somalia’s weak but internationally recognized transitional government in the capital.

Since then, the Ethiopian troops, thought to number in the thousands, and the government’s fledging security forces have struggled to bring the same level of peace and security that the Islamists delivered.

Many of Mogadishu’s neighborhoods are still bullet-pocked no-go zones, and several government officials, including police chiefs, have recently been assassinated. On Saturday, Mogadishu’s mayor blamed members of the Hawiye clan, the dominant clan in the city, for the killings. Hawiye elders denied it.

A contingent of 1,600 Ugandan soldiers, the first part of a larger African Union peacekeeping force, has been beefing up efforts to protect officials.

It was at least the third time in a year that someone has tried to kill Mr. Gedi, a veterinarian-turned-politician.