AU envoy pleads for help
2009-09-18 22:19
Nairobi - An African Union envoy pleaded for more international aid on Friday to stabilise Somalia after an attack by Islamic insurgents on an AU peacekeeping base that killed 21 people. It was the deadliest single attack on the peacekeepers since they arrived in 2007.
"We need to get the international community to really come forward ... we don't have sufficient capacity," said Nicolas Bwakira, the AU envoy to Somalia.
The peacekeeping force from the 53-nation AU has long lamented that it is undermanned. Out of a planned 8 000 troops, there are only about 5 000 soldiers from Uganda and Burundi.
Deadliest single attack
Burundian Major General Juvenal Niyoyunguruza, the deputy commander, was killed in Thursday's attack as he was about to depart Somalia and was introducing his successor, who survived.
The death toll from the twin suicide car bombings rose to 21 on Friday, including 17 peacekeepers, an AU spokesperson said. The previous highest toll was 11 peacekeepers who died in February in an insurgent attack.
Al-Shabab, a powerful Islamist group with foreign fighters in its ranks, claimed responsibility and said Thursday's attack was to avenge a US commando raid on Monday that killed a key al-Qaeda operative, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, in southern Somalia.
About 40 others were wounded in the car bombs at Mogadishu's airport where the base is located, said Gaffel Nkolokosa, the spokesperson for the AU mission for Somalia.
Counterstrike
A counterstrike from the AU base killed at least seven people in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital.
The suicide car bombings underscore links between al-Qaeda's terror network and Somalia's homegrown insurgency. Many fear the impoverished and lawless African nation is becoming a haven for al-Qaeda - a place for terrorists to train and plan attacks elsewhere.
Somalia's national security minister - who took the job after his predecessor was killed in a suicide attack in June - told reporters in Nairobi that his government has little capacity to "stop someone who is determined to die ... But we have to make attempts to eliminate them."
Abdullahi Mohamed Ali added that the government is boosting security at key government and AU installations. The twenty-nine wounded people were evacuated from the base to Nairobi.
Suicide attacks virtually unknown
Suicide attacks were virtually unknown in Somalia before 2007, even though the nation has been wracked by war for almost two decades.
Al-Shabab controls much of Somalia and operates openly in the capital, confining the government and peacekeepers to a few blocks of the city. The US and the UN both support Somalia's government and the African peacekeeping force.
Last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged during a trip to Africa to expand US support, including military aid, to the beleaguered Somali government and the AU peacekeeping force. She did not give details.
Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and turned on each other. Piracy has flourished off the Somali coast, making the Gulf of Aden one of the most dangerous waterways in the world.
- AP