Bomb Blast Kills at Least 15 Women in Somalia
Posted on August 4, 2008
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More than 15 women cleaning the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, were killed Sunday by a large bomb buried in a pile of garbage, witnesses and hospital officials said.
Mogadishu, the country’s bullet-pocked capital, has seen more than its share of carnage lately as Islamist insurgents wage an intense urban battle against government and Ethiopian forces. But witnesses described an especially grisly and panicked scene on Sunday after a street sweeper accidentally tripped a large roadside bomb.
The women were part of a United Nations-sponsored food-for-work program, which paid them in sacks of sorghum to clean up Mogadishu’s gritty streets. The road where they were working is a main route for Somali and Ethiopian troops, who are backing up Somalia’s weak transitional government.
Peace still looks far away. A cease-fire agreement signed in June between the government and an Islamist faction has not diminished the fighting, which seems to kill mostly civilians.
