Two arrested in Somali president attack investigation

BAIDOA, Somalia, Sep 28 (Reuters) Somali police investigating an assassination attempt on the president have arrested two people and recovered explosives, officials said today.

About 50 police in three armoured vehicles raided a house in the government's provincial seat of Baidoa, where five men suspected of orchestrating last week's car bomb attack are thought to have stayed, Interior Minister Hussein Mohamed Farah Aideed said.

They arrested the landlord of the house for questioning, as well as another man at an Islamic school.

''Two men have been arrested and investigations are going on,'' Aideed told Reuters.

''Explosives were found in one of the houses where some suspects were staying. ... Police are interrogating the landlord in order to get more details of the suspects.'' Police have stepped up security patrols in Baidoa as part of investigations into the country's first known suicide bombing, which targeted President Abdullahi Yusuf.

Yusuf blamed al Qaeda for the attack, which killed five people, including his brother outside parliament in the town 240 km from the capital Mogadishu. Six attackers were killed in a firefight with Yusuf's bodyguards after the blast.

Despite 15 years of clan fighting, the attack raised fears that Somalia was facing a new kind of violence.

Islamists, who control a swathe of southern Somalia and have challenged the authority of Yusuf's interim government, have pointed the finger at neighbour Ethiopia, which witnesses say has deployed troops to Somalia to protect the Western-backed government.

Addis Ababa denies sending troops to Somalia.

The interim government is the 14th attempt at effective central rule since the 1991 ouster of a dictator.

REUTERS SP HT1832