Somali Grenade Attack Kills More Than 20

The death toll in a grenade attack in northeastern Somalia increased to 21 and the number of wounded doubled to 100, United Nations and local officials said Wednesday.

The grenade exploded Tuesday in a crowded residential neighborhood in Bossaso, a port town in the semiautonomous region of Puntland. Authorities said at the time that 15 people were killed and 50 wounded.

Regional Governor Muse Geele Yusuf and the U.N. relief agency provided the updated figures.

Most of those killed or wounded in the attack were Ethiopians believed to be on their way to find work in the Arabian Peninsula, which lies across the Gulf of Aden, officials said.

"It was a wicked and very tragic event committed by unscrupulous culprits against innocent refugees," said Puntland's vice president, Hassan Dahir Afqura. He said police were investigating the attack, the first of its kind in the relatively quiet town.

The United Nations also condemned the attack.

"I'm terribly shocked by this attack which targeted innocent civilians, including women and children," said the UNHCR representative for Somalia, Guillermo Bettocchi. "These people had come to Bossaso only to escape a life of hardship and were harmless."

Hundreds of Ethiopians in the area live in crowded, makeshift shelters.

Bossaso's main hospital was treating nearly 100 victims of the blast, a volunteer nurse said.

"Fourteen of them have lost parts of their bodies such as hands and legs, and many are in a life-threatening condition," said the nurse, Yusuf Aden Diriye.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was believed to have been related to the long-running animosity between citizens of Ethiopia and Somalia.

The two neighbors have a long history of tense - and, at times, violent - relations. Ethiopian troops are propping up a shaky U.N.-backed government in the southern part of the country.

Along with asylum seekers seeking safety, many Ethiopians come to Bossaso hoping to escape poverty in their own country. They plan to cross the Gulf of Aden toward Yemen and the Gulf countries, seeking employment and a better life.

"We fled from Ethiopia because of problems. We have nothing to do with the tense history of rivalry between our troops in Somalia and the Islamic insurgents, so we wonder why we are targeted," refugee Shune Borow told The Associated Press by telephone.

Puntland, unlike the south, has been relatively peaceful since Somalia's last functioning government collapsed, leaving rival warlords to turn on each other and divide the nation among squabbling clans.

Meanwhile, in the central Somali town of Belet Weyne on Wednesday, a judge was fatally shot, police chief Abdi Aden Adow said.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991. Last week, a director at the Security Ministry said a radical Islamic group that was driven from power a year ago by a Western-supported offensive is making a significant comeback in Somalia and the government can do little to stop it.