MOGADISHO, Somalia — A roadside bomb killed two policemen in Mogadishu just minutes after a convoy carrying Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed had driven past, reports said Wednesday.
Yusuf has been targeted several times in recent months, including by a mortar attack on his plane as he flew to Djibouti to meet with UN officials there to push for a peace deal.
Three other people were injured in the latest attack, the BBC reported.
Somalia and some opposition figures earlier this month agreed a cease, but insurgents battling the transitional government have rejected the deal.
Violence has continued unabated and fighting in Mogadishu Tuesday killed at least seven people.
The deaths came as the insurgents late Tuesday attacked government and Ethiopian Woyanne troops searching for weapons in people’s homes.
The UN’s refugees chief on Wednesday also called the plight of Somalis packed into a border camp in Kenya a desperate cry for peace in their homeland.
At the sprawling camp in Dadaab where nearly 200,000 refugees people are sheltered, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said Somalia is one of the world’s worst crises, and the international community has ignored it for too long.
The Somali crisis is in the same league as Afghanistan, Iraq and Darfur, said Guterres as he toured the camp for Somali refugees in eastern Kenya, 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Somali border.
“We need to improve these living conditions for Somalis until peace allows them to go back,” said Guterres.
The conflict in Somalia seems to have grown more wretched every year since 1991, when warlords toppled Mohamed Siad Barre.
Source: Alalam