21 killed, 100 wounded in Somalia attack

A grenade attack in northeastern Somalia killed 21 people and wounded 100, officials said Wednesday, raising the toll a day after the explosion.

The grenade blew up Tuesday in a crowded residential neighborhood in Bossaso, a port town in the semiautonomous region of Puntland, officials said. At the time, authorities said 15 people had been killed and 50 wounded.

U.N. officials later provided updated figures showing that 21 people died and 100 were hurt, regional Gov. Muse Geele Yusuf said. Most were believed to be Ethiopians on their way to find work in the Arabian Peninsula, which lies across the Gulf of Aden, officials said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was believed to have been related to the long-running animosity between citizens of Ethiopia and Somalia.

The two neighbors have a long history of tense — and at times, violent — relations. In Somalia, Ethiopian troops currently are propping up a shaky U.N.-backed government in the south.

"It was a wicked and very tragic event committed by unscrupulous culprits against innocent refugees," said Puntland's vice president, Hassan Dahir Afqura.

The U.N. also condemned the attack.

"I'm terribly shocked by this attack, which targeted innocent civilians, including women and children," said Guillermo Bettocchi, the Somalia representative for the U.N. refugee agency. "These people had come to Bossaso only to escape a life of hardship and were harmless."

Bossaso's main hospital was treating nearly 100 victims of the blast, a volunteer nurse said.

"Fourteen of them have lost parts of their bodies, such as hands and legs, and many are in a life-threatening condition," said the nurse, Yusuf Aden Diriye.

Many Ethiopians also come to Bossaso hoping to escape poverty in their own country by crossing the Gulf of Aden toward Yemen and the Gulf countries.

"We fled from Ethiopia because of problems. We have nothing to do with the tense history of rivalry between our troops in Somalia and the Islamic insurgents, so we wonder why we are targeted," refugee Shune Borow told The Associated Press by telephone.

Puntland, unlike the south, has been relatively peaceful since Somalia's last functioning government collapsed, leaving rival warlords to turn on each other and divide the nation among squabbling clans.

Meanwhile, in the central Somali town of Belet Weyne, a judge was fatally shot Wednesday, police chief Abdi Aden Adow said.

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Associated Press writer Mohamed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu contributed to this report.