MOGADISHU, Aug 31, 2006 (AFP) - At least nine people were injured on Thursday in a grenade attack on a crowded market in the Somali capital, prompting Islamists controlling the city to reinforce security, witnesses said.

Dozens of people scampered for safety after a man in a speeding car hurled the grenade into the El-Tubaweyne market in Mogadishu's northern Yakshid district, where it exploded near a petrol station, they said.

"I saw something being thrown from a speeding white car and seconds later, I heard a heavy explosion," businessman Gaal Omar hudow told AFP at the scene.

Doctors at the nearby Keysaney hospital hospital said they were treating nine people for injuries, some of them serious, who had arrived at the facility covered in blood.

Gunmen loyal to the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), which controls Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia, immediately cordoned off the area and attempted to pursue the attacker as he fled.

"There was blood everywhere, but nobody knows the motive or who is behind this evil act," said a SICS official, "We have already tightened security around the area, but we have not yet arrested anybody."

The attack came a day after two Muslim militiamen were killed when unknown attackers fired on a military camp 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the capital where Islamist forces are undergoing training.

Since seizing Mogadishu from warlords in June after months of fierce battles, the Islamists have rapidly expanded their territory and are credited by locals with restoring a semblance of law and order in those areas.

Somalia has been without an effective central authority for the past 16 years since the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre plunged the country into anarchy.

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