Several people were killed and 20 injured in grenade attacks in eastern Ethiopia late on Sunday, a government spokesman said on Monday. One grenade was thrown into a hotel restaurant and another into another location, killing two or three people at least, Information Minister Bereket Simon said. It was too early to connect the explosions in the town of Jijiga, in the Somali region of Ethiopia, to the Horn of Africa country's divisive parliamentary elections, the minister added. "This was a terrorist attack that was meant to terrorize people. The election will carry on as normal," he told Reuters. Twenty-three parliamentary seats are to be contested in the remote Somali region next month, after re-votes were ordered in light of allegations of fraud during the May 15 polls. "I have no proof that this is to do with the elections. We need to check after the police investigation," Bereket said.
