Wave Of Suicide Blasts Kills 19 In Somalia

(AP)  Suicide bombers struck a U.N. compound and several other targets in northern Somalia on Wednesday, killing at least 22 people, as talks about Somalia's political crisis began in neighboring Kenya, officials said.

"We are still counting the bodies," said Ismail Adani, a spokesman for the government of the breakaway republic of Somaliland, where bombers hit the U.N. compound, the Ethiopian consulate and the presidential palace. He said at least 19 people had died in those attacks and that the death toll could rise.

Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin's secretary died in the blast, but the president was not hurt, Adani said.

The U.N. confirmed that its compound was hit by a suicide car bomb.

"There are known casualties as well as deaths, but the numbers are currently being verified," said Dawn Elizabeth Blalock, a spokeswoman for the U.N.'s Somalia program in Nairobi, Kenya.

Also Wednesday, suicide bombers attacked two intelligence facilities in the northern Somali region of Puntland. The two suicide bombers and a security official died in the attack, and five other security officials were wounded, said Muse Gelle Yusuf, governor of Somalia's northern port city of Bossaso. The region is a hotbed of abductions and piracy.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for Wednesday's suicide attacks, but in the past Islamist rebels have launched such strikes to coincide with U.N.-led efforts to end the turmoil in the Horn of Africa nation.

Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, when clan warlords ousted longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other. The current government was formed in 2004 with the help of the United Nations, but has failed to protect citizens from violence or the country's poverty.

Somalia's north has tried to sever ties with the chaotic south, which includes the beleaguered capital, Mogadishu.

Puntland has a semiautonomous administration, and Somaliland has long sought international recognition as being its own nation, separate from Somalia.

Political talks regarding Somalia's political and humanitarian crises were under way Wednesday in Nairobi, Kenya. At the talks were members of Somalia's government and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who has troops in Somalia to prop up the weak Somali administration.

Meles told the meeting that Somalia's government and parliament had failed - as shown by "the lack of progress in all areas in governance."

Islamic militants have waged an Iraq-style insurgency against Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies for almost two years. The nearly daily mortar attacks and gun battles have killed thousands of Somali civilians in the capital, deaths that all sides blame on each other.