Frank Nyakairu & Agencies
1 January 2008
Kampala — Somali insurgents launched multiple attacks late Sunday, attacking the Ugandan peacekeepers and leaving eight Somali civilians dead.
A contingent of Ugandan troops stationed in the city's strategic junction K4, near Mogadishu Airport came under fire late Sunday but the AU Peacekeeper's spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda said no one was hurt. "We fought them off. No one was hurt," Captain Ankunda said.
In separate incidents, insurgents also attacked bases of Ethiopian troops at the main Mogadishu Stadium with mortar shells. A mortar killed eight members of a family at a refugee camp on Sunday in the latest fighting between Islamist-led rebels and country's interim government, witnesses said.
"My wife, five children and two of my relatives were killed by the blast," said Madey Sufi Moalim, who was buying supplies when the shell landed on the camp north of Mogadishu.
"They were cut to pieces. My wife was pregnant and my children were aged two to eight. I'm being helped by neighbours who are helping me collect the pieces of my dead family."
Over the past two weeks, the small central African nation of Burundi dispatched close to 200 peacekeepers to the Somali capital Mogadishu and is expected to have an 800-strong battalion there by January.
Burundi eventually plans on sending 1,700 troops to the war-torn Horn of Africa nation, to reinforce the 1,600-strong contingent from Uganda, the first African country to contribute troops to the AU peacekeeping mission.
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