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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Mon Aug 23 2010 - 09:12:05 EDT
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/340597,insurgents-mogadishu-summary.html
African Union aims to push insurgents from Mogadishu - Summary
Posted : Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:14:19 GMT
By : dpa
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Nairobi - The African Union is aiming to push Islamist insurgents out of the
Somali capital Mogadishu with a troop surge that began Friday, a senior AU
official said Monday.
Some 6,000 AU troops from Uganda and Burundi are propping up the weak
Western-backed government, which the insurgent group al-Shabaab and allied
groups have penned in to a few enclaves in Mogadishu.
The AU's Deputy Special Representative for Somalia, Wafula Wamunyinyi, told
journalists in the Kenyan capital Nairobi that an extra 2,000 troops
recently pledged by East African grouping IGAD were expected to drive back
the insurgents.
"With the new troops we are hoping that we are going to expand further and
move them out of Mogadishu," said Wamunyinyi. "We may not move them
completely out of Mogadishu, but we think we are going to make major strides
with the 2,000 (extra troops)."
Wamunyinyi said that additional troops from Uganda had already been
deployed, and that Guinea and Burundi were expected to send more soldiers.
However, he refused to give a timescale for when the full mandated 8,000
troops would be on the ground.
Al-Shabaab, which claims links to the al-Qaeda network, recently carried out
its first attack outside Somali soil, targeting the Ugandan capital Kampala
with twin blasts that killed 76.
The insurgents said they carried out the bombing because AU troops were
shelling civilians - a charge often leveled at the peacekeepers, who are
accused of returning fire at insurgent positions in heavily populated areas.
Wamunyinyi denied the charges, saying that troops were undergoing training
to avoid civilian casualties.
"Where the civilians are, we are saying you cannot shell," he said. "Even on
some occasions, when we have had exchanges ... we have always avoided the
civilian population."
Somalia has been immersed in chaos since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed
Siad Barre.
The current insurgency, which has claimed more than 20,000 lives, kicked off
in early 2007, following Ethiopia's invasion to oust the ruling Islamist
regime.
The ongoing chaos has attracted foreign fighters. At the weekend, 10 people
died when a car bomb they were making exploded prematurely. Afghan,
Pakistani and Indian nationals were amongst those dead, the AU said.
There are now as many as 2,000 foreign fighters operating from bases in
Somalia, training and financing local militants, Wamunyinyi said.
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