The interim President of Somalia, Abdullahi Yusuf, has described how he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by a suicide bomber.

President Yusuf told the BBC the bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a presidential convoy in the central town of Baidoa.

Yusuf said he escaped his burning car, but added that his brother and three bodyguards were killed.

Somalia's foreign minister said six attackers died in an ensuing gunbattle.

The president had addressed a meeting of the country's transitional parliament only minutes before the attack, which left 18 people wounded.

It is not clear who carried out the attack. The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), the Islamist alliance which controls much of the south of the country, including the capital, Mogadishu, has condemned it.

The interim government controls only Baidoa and a small area around it.

"The attack was a suicide car bomb against me," President Yusuf told the BBC Somali language radio service.

"The suicide car hit the first car in the convoy and exploded."

The attack came as MPs started a key session to approve the new cabinet.

Despite the blast, the MPs went ahead with their meeting in a converted warehouse which serves as the parliament and approved the new government line-up.

Correspondents say the violence is bound to further heighten tension in war-torn Somalia, which has not had a functioning national government for 15 years.

Ten days ago, Mohamed Ibrahim Habsade, the warlord who controls Baidoa, told the BBC that militiamen would eject government members by force if they did not withdraw from Baidoa peacefully.

President Yusuf wants foreign peacekeepers sent to Somalia - a suggestion strongly rejected by the Islamists, who say they can take care of security.

Meanwhile, a group of Italian Catholic nuns are being evacuated from the capital, Mogadishu, after one of their elderly colleagues was shot dead on Sunday by gunmen. The UIC has condemned the killing.

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