MOGADISHU, Somalia – A bomb blast killed at least 15 people in the Somali capital on Sunday, witnesses said, as political divisions on both sides of the conflict deepened.

Salah Adde said the bomb was hidden under a pile of rubbish on a main road and 10 of the 15 bodies he counted were women street cleaners.

“It was an ugly scene with blood everywhere. I could not count the dead, I just glanced at once and I ran away for my life,” said another witness, Farah Abdi.

The head of Medina hospital, Dahir Dhere, said 35 wounded people were admitted. Most were women and children and many were in critical condition, he said.

In a separate incident, Islamic insurgents attacked the bases of Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies in north Mogadishu’s Towfiq neighborhood overnight.

Resident Mohamed Deq said he saw the bodies of three government soldiers lying in the street.

The attacks follow a period of relative calm after a peace agreement was signed last month. But the agreement between the government and some elements of the Islamic insurgency has also fueled power struggles on both sides of the conflict.

A hardline leader who rejected the deal seized control of the Islamist resistance from a more moderate leader last week. On Saturday, two thirds of the Somali cabinet offered their resignations in protest over the prime minister firing a close ally of the president, who was subsequently reinstated. The prime minister, who has a background in humanitarian work, had fired the mayor of Mogadishu for failing to bring peace to the capital despite heavy-handed tactics by his security forces.

The splits complicate efforts to bring peace to Somalia, which has been at war since a group of warlords overthrew a socialist dictator in 1991. After years of war between the heavily armed clans, an Islamist group took control of the capital and much of the south in 2006 but were driven from power at the end of the year by Ethiopian allies of the United Nations-backed transitional government.

The Islamists launched an Iraq-style insurgency that has killed thousands of Somalis and driven hundreds of thousands from their home. The U.N. estimates half the population on the arid Horn of Africa nation will be dependent on food aid by the end of the year.

By MOHAMED SHEIKH NOR, Associated Press Writer