Somali prime minister survives bomb attack

Story Highlights

• Somali PM Ali Mohamed Gedi survives suicide bomb attack on his home
• Six guards were killed in the attack, and the PM's house damaged
• Gedi has survived two previous assassination attempts using bombs

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MOGADISHU, Somalia (CNN) -- Somalian Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi survived a suicide vehicle bomb blast that heavily damaged his home Sunday, his spokesman said.

A Toyota Land Cruiser loaded with explosives crashed through the security gate of the prime minister's Mogadishu home and exploded, killing six guards and damaging the house that also serves as the prime minister's office, spokesman Abdullahi Odka said.

He said the prime minister was at home at the time, but he was unhurt.

An African Union spokesman said Gedi was taken from the residence to an undisclosed location.

Odka said he believed it was the biggest explosion in Mogadishu to date.

"I saw limbs nearly a kilometer from where the suicide bomber detonated," a police officer at the scene, who asked not to be named, told Reuters by telephone.

"We don't know how the suicide bomber managed to pass through undetected. ... The wounded cannot be counted."

Prime Minister Gedi has survived two previous assassination attempts using bombs in recent years.

His interim administration is struggling to impose its authority on the anarchic Horn of Africa nation.

Near daily attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian military allies are blamed on members of a defeated Islamist movement who have vowed to wage an "Iraq-style" insurgency.

On Friday, a U.S. warship fired missiles at one group of foreign fighters in the remote mountains of northern Somalia.

On Sunday, the region's finance minister said six Islamists -- from America, Britain, Sweden, Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen -- had been killed in the air strikes and in gunbattles with local forces. (Full story)

Journalist Mohamed Amiin in Mogadishu contributed to this report.