(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-02-03 16:10

MOGADISHU - Some seven women were killed and unknown number of others were severely wounded after a minibus they were traveling in hit a roadside bomb in the southern Waberi district of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, Police and witnesses said Sunday.

"There were limbs and blood everywhere around the wreckage of the minibus, I saw the shattered bodies of seven women and the bus was very much destroyed," said Yusuf Gulet, an eyewitness.

The women were dealers of the semi-narcotic leaves known as kat which is heavily consumed in Somalia. They were traveling to an airstrip in the southern outskirts of Mogadishu where small planes carrying the kat arrive from Kenya where the plant is grown.

Abdullahi Shashaa, police spokesman, said that the minibus could hold nearly 25 women and he expected all to be dead.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

Somalia has been without a central authority since the overthrow of the late ruler Mohamed Siyad Barre in 1991.