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Nairobi,
Kenya, September 19, 2009 – Islamic insurgents on Friday vowed to launch
more attacks after using stolen U.N. cars in an assault on an African
Union peacekeeping base in Somalia that killed 21 people. A Somali
official said that six more U.N. vehicles were unaccounted for.
Thursday's suicide car bombings were the deadliest single attack on AU
peacekeepers since they arrived in the lawless African nation in 2007.
The bombings also underscored links between al-Qaida's terror network
and Somalia's homegrown insurgency.
In a message posted Friday on jihadist forums, the Global Islamic Media
Front said it was speaking on behalf of Somali insurgent group
al-Shabaab and vowed more attacks.
"What is coming is worse and more bitter, with permission from Allah,"
the group said, according to the Washington-based SITE Intelligence
Group, a terrorist-monitoring firm.
Sheik Yusuf Mohamed Siyad, state minister for defense in Somalia, said
there were six more stolen U.N. vehicles unaccounted for and that
authorities were monitoring the situation.
Al-Shabaab, a powerful Islamist group with foreign fighters in its
ranks, has claimed responsibility for Thursday's violence and said it
was to avenge a U.S. commando raid on Monday that killed a key al-Qaida
operative, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, in southern Somalia.
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley condemned Thursday's attack
and said the U.S. would continue to support the Somali government.
"We reject violence and extremism as a solution to Somalia's
challenges," Crowley said at a press briefing Thursday in Washington.
Somalia's national security minister — who took the job after his
predecessor was killed in a suicide attack in June — told reporters in
Nairobi that his government has little capacity to "stop someone who is
determined to die ... But we have to make attempts to eliminate them."
Abdillahi Mohamed Ali added that the government is boosting security at
key government and AU installations.
An African Union envoy, meanwhile, pleaded for more international aid to
stabilize Somalia, which many fear is becoming a haven for al-Qaida — a
place for terrorists to train and plan attacks elsewhere.
"We need to get the international community to really come forward ...
we don't have sufficient capacity," said Nicolas Bwakira, the AU envoy
to Somalia.
The peacekeeping force from the 53-nation AU has long lamented that it
is undermanned. Out of a planned 8,000 troops, there are only about
5,000 soldiers from Uganda and Burundi.
Burundian Major Gen. Juvenal Niyoyunguruza, the deputy commander, was
killed in Thursday's attack as he was about to depart Somalia and was
introducing his successor, who survived.
The death toll from the twin suicide car bombings rose to 21 Friday,
including 17 peacekeepers, an AU spokesman said. The previous highest
toll was 11 peacekeepers who died in February in an insurgent attack.
About 40 others were wounded Thursday in the car bombs at Mogadishu's
airport where the AU base is located, said Gaffel Nkolokosa, the
spokesman for the AU mission for Somalia. A counterstrike from the AU
base killed at least seven people in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital.
Suicide attacks were virtually unknown in Somalia before 2007, even
though the nation has been wracked by war for almost two decades.
Al-Shabaab controls much of Somalia and operates openly in the capital,
confining the government and peacekeepers to a few blocks of the city.
The U.S. and the U.N. both support Somalia's government and the African
peacekeeping force.
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged
during a trip to Africa to expand U.S. support, including military aid,
to the beleaguered Somali government and the AU peacekeeping force. She
did not give details.
Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords
overthrew dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre in 1991 and turned on each other.
Piracy has flourished off the Somali coast, making the Gulf of Aden one
of the most dangerous waterways in the world.
Associated Press Writer Desmond Butler in Washington contributed to this
report.
Source: AP, September 18, 2009
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