At least 15 people, including 13 women cleaners and two men, were killed and more than 40 others wounded on Sunday after a roadside bomb exploded at a street in the north of the Somali capital Mogadishu, witnesses and hospital sources said.

"At least 10 of the more than fifty women cleaners died instantly after the bomb exploded shortly before they were to start work," Mohamed Dahir, an eyewitness, told Xinhua. "Many others including some men were also severely wounded in the explosion."

Health officials at Mogadishu's main Medina hospital said that they were inundated with injured people, adding that nearly 22 have so far been brought to the hospital.

"This is not what I have ever seen before. Most of the wounded people are dismembered," Dr. Dahir Dheere, a senior doctor and manager of Medina hospital told Xinhua.

The huge explosion occurred in the Somali government quarter in the north of Mogadishu in the early hours of the morning and the explosion could be heard around the restive coastal capital.

Witnesses said people rushed to the scene to help the injured and regroup the dismembered limbs of the dead as well as the injured.

"The survivors helped to identify the limbs of the dead and the injured by the clothes and shoes they were wearing," another eyewitness told Xinhua.

"Limbs, body parts and blood were strewn in a wide area and we have to collect them from yards away," the witness said.

This is the second time that street cleaners were killed in a bomb explosion. Five were killed early last year after a bomb exploded as they were sweeping streets in the south of Mogadishu.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the blast and it is not clear if the bomb was planted in the area or whether it is one of the many unexploded ordinance scattered in Somalia which has claimed many lives after two decades of civil conflict.

The explosion came as political crises in Somalia is deepening with two thirds ministers of the Somali cabinet resigning after Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein sacked the Mayor of Mogadishu who said he has been reinstated by the president of the country.

(Xinhua News Agency August 3, 2008)