Steven Candia

31 August 2010

Kampala — Eight Ugandan peacekeepers injured on Monday in the Somali capital Mogadishu when al-Shabaab militants fired mortars at the presidential palace have been evacuated to Nairobi.

In an interview last evening, African Union spokesperson Barigye Ba-Hoku said the soldiers were airlifted to a level three hospital in Nairobi for further treatment. A level three hospital deals with cases that cannot be handled by medical units at the contingent and force headquarters in the war-stricken country. All the injured soldiers, Barigye said, were doing well.

Four Ugandan soldiers serving on the African Union peace-keeping mission were killed when the rebels fired mortars at the palace. Barigye said burial plans for the soldiers were being handled in Kampala. Uganda and Burundi have deployed more than 6,300 troops to Somalia to guard the port and President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.

Though the clashes have stopped, eight people, among them a woman and her child, were killed yesterday when two mini-buses were blown up by a road-side bomb at Ex-Control Afgoye, near kilometre seven in Mogadishu. The AU forces are locked in heavy fighting with the Islamist rebels who want to topple the transitional administration.

However, Barigye dismissed media reports that the peacekeepers were losing to the militants, saying the contrary is true. The peacekeeping forces, he said, had instead captured more territory in Mogadishu.

Media reports that are portraying the AU forces negatively, he said, are being written by people who have not been to Mogadishu and whose reports have been influenced by the al-Shabaab here. "Unfortunately, even the journalists here fear reporting anything against the al-Shabaab, Barigye said.

Last week, the al-Shabaab vowed to intensify its holy war against the UN-backed government which they denounced as a puppet of the West.