More Burundian troops deployed in Mogadishu today to reinforce an African Union (AU) peace force caught in the middle of a deepening Iraq-style insurgency.
A source at the main airport in Somalia's capital said a further 420 soldiers from Burundi arrived today, a day after 400 Burundian peacekeepers landed on Saturday.
The AU mission is guarding key sites in the city where a UN-backed interim government and its Ethiopian military allies are fighting Islamist rebels and heavily armed clan militia.
The multinational force, AMISOM, was supposed to be 8,000 strong but has been operating for months with just 2,200 soldiers, all from Uganda and Burundi. The weekend's deployments bring the strength of the force to 3,020.
Islamist al Shabaab rebels have vowed to shoot down any aircraft using the coastal airstrip and fired mortar shells at another AU military plane that touched down there on Sept. 19.
The peacekeepers have been targeted in a string of bombings and ambushes since the Islamists launched their rebellion early last year. The fighting has killed nearly 10,000 civilians. Seven Ugandan soldiers and one Burundian have died.
Having ruled south Somalia for six months in 2006, but then been forced out by allied Ethiopian-Somali troops, the Islamists have regrouped and now control large swathes of the south again.
The worst insecurity for nearly two decades in the chaotic Horn of Africa country has fuelled a wave of kidnappings this year as well as an explosion of attacks by pirates offshore.
Security forces from northern Somalia killed a pirate and wounded two others during a shoot-out today with hijackers aboard a Panama-flagged ship, a local government official said. One soldier was killed.
Somali pirates have hijacked more than 30 ships so far this year and received ransoms totalling up to $30 million.
In the highest profile case so far, ransom talks are continuing after they seized a Ukrainian vessel, the MV Faina,which was loaded with 33 tanks and other weaponry.
Reuters