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Somalia: Roadside bomb wounds 2 Burundian forces, 3 Somali residents
Tue. October 14, 2008 02:30 am.- By Bonny Apunyu. -
(SomaliNet) A roadside bomb exploded in the capital Mogadishu wounding two African Union peacekeepers from Burundi and three Somali civilians, an officer and witnesses said.
A source said Monday that the explosion went off as a contingent of Burundi soldiers was leaving the main airport - where they had landed earlier in the day - to head to their base in southern Mogadishu.
"The contingent had got out of the airport when they were targeted with a roadside bomb that left two of them slightly injured," a Burundi officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Witnesses confirmed that the attack also wounded three civilians.
"The soldiers were walking along the road when a heavy explosion hit them. I saw two of them bleeding; one of them was walking and the other was carried by colleagues," witness Mohamed Adan Yare said.
A plane carrying Burundian soldiers landed in Mogadishu on Sunday, a day after around 400 other Burundi troops arrived, Somali security officer, Dahir Adan Bare, said.
The AU has about 3 000 peacekeepers in Mogadishu, far short of the 8 000 the AU had pledged to deploy.
Initially, Uganda sent at least 1 600 and Burundi at least 850 peacekeepers to bolster the weak Somali government threatened by a powerful Islamist militant movement.
The weekend arrivals defied a militia's ban on the use of Mogadishu's main airport.
On September 16, the hardline Shebab militia declared Mogadishu's main airport closed, calling it a tool of Ethiopia's "occupation" of Somalia and vowing to bring down any plane that defied the order.
The Islamists have since fired several mortar shells at the airport, where the Ugandan contingent is based, triggering retaliatory fire that caused dozens of civilian deaths in neighbouring populated areas.
Somalia has been without an effective government since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre touched off bloodletting that has defied numerous bids to restore stability. - AFP
News Category: Somalia
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