Somali officials escape assasination but two die

MOGADISHU, June 27 (Reuters) Somalia's trade minister and former defence minister escaped assassination attempts, but two others were killed in the latest Iraq-style guerrilla attacks on government targets, witnesses said today.

A roadside bomb hit Trade Minister Abdullahi Ahmed Afrah's convoy yesterday late evening in a busy north Mogadishu street.

A female passerby was killed and eight people including four of the minister's bodyguards were injured, locals said.

''The minister escaped death narrowly,'' resident Omar Rage told Reuters. ''It was a remote-controlled roadside bomb. It exploded as soon as his vehicle passed.'' Then today, a landmine exploded near former defence minister Abdikadir Adan Shire's vehicle in the central Somali district of Bardhere. Shire, a member of Somalia's parliament, was rushed to hospital with head injuries.

''The driver lost his two legs and died. Four others are wounded,'' an aide to the former defence minister, who gave his name as Adan, said by telephone.

The interim Somali government was set up in 2005 in the 14th attempt to restore central rule to the anarchic Horn of Africa nation since the ousting of a dictator in 1991. It accuses the militant Islamic Courts movement of launching such attacks.

Since they were ousted from Mogadishu at the start of the year, the Islamists have waged a bloody insurgency against the government and its Ethiopian military backers, with targeted assassinations becoming a favoured method of late.

In further violence in Mogadishu, an assailant threw a hand grenade at a police patrol in sprawling Bakara Market on Wednesday.

Then too, civilians bore the brunt of the attack and three were wounded.

The government -- and many in the international community -- are pinning hopes for peace on a twice-postponed national reconciliation conference that is scheduled to start on July 15.

In a move clearly intended to appease Islamist ire, conference chairman Ali Mahdi said he had spoken to a leading figure in the group about whether they would attend.

''I spoke to Ibrahim Adow, who is in charge of foreign relations for the Islamic Courts. We spoke about how all parties can attend the national reconciliation conference. We are waiting for a word from them,'' he told reporters in Mogadishu.

Adow was in Qatar when he spoke to Mahdi, but is based in Eritrea with other prominent Somali Islamist exiles.

REUTERS SYU PM1935