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Somalia

Somalia: Hargeisa and Bosaso - Calm returns in Puntland, many dead in Somaliland

Six security officials, a woman passing on the street and the two car-bomb suicide attackers that targeted the offices of the Intelligence Service of Puntland were the victims of a double attack this morning in Bosaso, key port city of the semi-autonomous Puntland region. "The situation is calm and under control now. The police has cordoned off the areas of the attacks and all seems calm", said a MISNA source contacted in the city, adding that the death toll in circulation should be definitive. The death of the six security officials was confirmed earlier to the press also by Puntland President Mohamoud Musa Hirsi Adde, close ally of Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf, also originally from Puntland. The situation is more critical in Hargeisa, in neighbouring Somaliland (also a northern Somali region that in 1991, after the fall of Siad Barre, declared its independence), where three attacks occurred, almost simultaneously, this morning at around 10:00: targeting the Ethiopian embassy, the presidential building and the offices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Based on still unverified preliminary tolls, around 20 people were killed in the city of Hargeisa, including UN personnel; indiscretions also indicate some "expatriates", i.e. foreigners, among the victims. Medical sources contacted by MISNA in Hargeisa however confirm that the most violent attack hit the Ethiopian embassy: "At the time of the blast there was a long line of people waiting for visas. We are receiving many civilians wounded in the blast", said a doctor of a Hargeisa hospital, who requested anonymity.

[BO]