ADDIS ABABA, May 31, 2007 – Five Ethiopian soldiers wounded in an attack on a truck in central Somalia have returned to their camp, the foreign ministry said Thursday, in a rare admission of Ethiopian casualties in Somalia.

The ministry said that Ethiopian troops had shot dead five people responsible for the attack immediately after it occurred on Wednesday near Beledweyne, around 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of the capital Mogadishu.

"Five members of the Ethiopian army who sustained light injuries in a terrorist grenade attack on a street in Beledweyne, Somalia, returned to their camp after having received medical treatment," the statement said.

"Five members of the terrorist group who perpetrated the attack have all been killed in a counter-measure the Ethiopian army took," it added.

Witnesses reported Wednesday that Ethiopian troops had killed four civilians in response to the attack on a truck carrying water to an Ethiopian army base near Beledweyne.

The Ethiopian ministry said that one of the five killed for suspected involvement in the attack was a local leader of "Al Shebab, a terrorist group with a link to Al-Qaeda."

Ethiopia , which helped Somali government troops oust an Islamist movement at the start of the year, rarely gives details of its casualties sustained in Somalia.

Almost daily attacks have occurred, mainly in the Somali capital Mogadishu, since Ethiopian-backed government forces defeated Islamist and clan fighters at the end of April after weeks of heavy fighting.

Somalia plunged into lawlessness with the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre and more than a dozen attempts to restore central authority have since failed.

Source: AFP