Two aid workers among four dead in Somalia blast

(Adds comments from U.N. Somalia representative on cabinet)

By Sahra Abdi Ahmed

KISMAYU, Somalia, Jan 28 (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed two Somalis and two foreign aid workers working for the Dutch arm of Medecins Sans Frontieres near the southern Somali port of Kismayu on Monday, witnesses said.

A Somali driver, a Kenyan doctor and a French logistics officer were killed instantly by the blast while a Somali journalist nearby died from shrapnel wounds, Abdi Adan Duale, a nurse with MSF-Holland in Kismayu, told Reuters.

A Reuters reporter saw three bodies in the vehicle.

"All foreign workers have left Kismayu," said Mariam Hussein Mohamed, another MSF nurse in the southern port.

She said a second Kenyan MSF official was wounded.

"We washed the bodies and wrapped them with white linen sheets. The plane carrying the dead and the other foreign staff is just about to leave for Nairobi," she told Reuters by telephone.

MSF-Holland confirmed in a statement that some of its aid workers were involved in an automobile incident in Kismayu. It said it had reports of fatalities but no other information.

Kismayu police chief Ibrahim Khalif Shanfool said two men were arrested after the blast. "We have two male suspects in our custody who were arrested at the site of the blast. Investigations are under way," he said.

The government has been fighting a year-long insurgency by Islamist militants in the capital Mogadishu, 500 km (300 miles) to the north, where its troops and Ethiopian allies are frequent targets of roadside bombs and ambushes.

FURTHER ATTACKS

Islamist insurgents attacked Ethiopian soldiers based in an old pasta factory in the city on Monday, killing two of them, according to local radio stations.

"I saw three wounded insurgents being carried by their colleagues who had their AK 47 rifles hanging on their shoulders," witness Muse Omar told Reuters by telephone.

"Mortars and heavy weapons were used by both sides against one another."

Local resident Mohamed Omar Siyad said three civilians were killed by mortar fire during the fighting and 27 others injured.

In a separate attack in the south-central region of Hiran, the local intelligence chief was shot dead.

"Two men armed with pistols have just shot Hiran intelligence chief Mohamed Ali Gabow. He died on the spot. His body has been taken to the local hospital," local journalist Omar Mohamed said from the provincial capital Beletweyne.

Kismayu -- under the control of the local clan and not Somalia's government -- has been quiet compared with Mogadishu, but Islamists have threatened attacks there as part of their aim of establishing Islamic rule in the Horn of Africa country.

Somalia has not had an effective government since warlords toppled Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, plunging the country into anarchy. Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein named a new reduced cabinet this month to replace one that fell apart in December over clan bickering.

The United Nations special representative for Somalia said on Monday the more streamlined cabinet should be able to carry out elections as scheduled by late 2009, but cautioned that restoring stability was a greater concern.

"There is no reason not to have elections in late 2009, but what's more important is stability and respect of commitments," Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said on the sidelines of a U.N.-sponsored conference in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. (Additional reporting by Guled Mohamed in Nairobi, Aweys Yusuf in Mogadishu, Reed Stevenson in Amsterdam and Ola Galal in Sharjah; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Caroline Drees)