A remote-controlled bomb killed four African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and wounded five more when it hit their convoy in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Wednesday, the AU said.
It was the first attack of its kind against the mission’s troops, which previously had only been shot at, said an AU security source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Suspicion immediately fell on insurgents who have waged a guerrilla campaign in the seaside capital since the interim government and its Ethiopian allies took over the anarchic city in late December.
”We lost four and five were wounded. It was a roadside bomb and its intention was to hit peacekeepers,” AU mission spokesperson Captain Paddy Ankunda said.
The blast occurred near Mogadishu’s old seaport, Ankunda said. The wounded were being treated at the AU’s field hospital behind Mogadishu’s international airport.
Use of roadside bombs — a favourite weapon of insurgents in Iraq — are on the rise in Mogadishu as insurgents target the interim government and Ethiopian soldiers.
The AU security source said peacekeepers had come across many roadside bombs.
”We have overcome many which were detected. This was a remote-controlled bomb,” the source said.
The explosion shattered a relative calm in Mogadishu that had endured since the end of a second wave of intense battles between insurgents and the interim government, backed by its Ethiopian allies.
At least 1 300 people were killed and entire neighbourhoods levelled in the two bouts of fighting with tanks, rockets and machineguns earlier this year.
The clashes, the worst Mogadishu has seen since the 1991 civil war that plunged the country into anarchy, has forced an estimated 365 000 refugees to flee the coastal capital.
The AU contingent of 1 600 soldiers from Uganda, the only peacekeepers in the country, have also been sucked into the fighting because insurgents have declared them targets.
Fighters from a militant Islamist movement defeated by the government and Ethiopian troops in early January have vowed to fight an Iraq-style insurgency.
Security experts say they have adopted tactics from Iraq, like the use of roadside bombs and targeted assassinations of government officials. — Reuters