Kampala — AN African Union (AU) meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Wednesday resolved to set up a mechanism to identify the insurgents in Somalia's recent violence and seek sanctions against them.

"We decided to set up a mechanism to clearly identify the spoilers. We are going to the use the UN and AU systems to seek sanctions against them," defence minister Crispus Kiyonga told Sunday Vision.

Sanctions, he said, could include travel bans, international arrest warrants and bringing them before the International Criminal Court.

The meeting was attended by defence ministers of countries that contribute troops to the AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the Somali Minister of Defence and the Peace and Security Commission of the AU.

The meeting also decided to boost AMISOM to over 5,000 troops, with one additional battalion pledged by Sierra Leone and another one by Burundi.

Uganda is the biggest contributor to AMISOM, with three battalions stationed at strategic positions in Mogadishu, such as the port, the airport and the presidential palace.

On Friday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a statement calling for opposition groups to end their offensive, renounce violence and join reconciliation efforts. Over 100 people are said to have died in last week's fighting and 30,000 more have fled Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

The UN said foreigners with possible links to al-Qaeda were fighting alongside the hardline Islamists of al-Shabaab, who also supply them with heavy weaponry.

"There is no doubt, from sources overt and covert, that in the attempted coup of last weekend there was significant involvement of foreigners, some from this continent and others from outside this continent," the UN's envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdalla told reporters.

Kiyonga declined to name the spoilers or give their nationalities. But Somali sources told Sunday Vision that some come from Afghanistan and Iraq while others are Somalis from the Diaspora who previously lived in the US and Europe.

Asked if there was any link between the insurgents and the pirates who are hijacking ships in the Indian Ocean, he said: "We have not yet firmly established that but there is a possibility."

Uganda, he added, would not send more troops to AMISOM but would continue to train and effectively organise the Somali army.

The $200m pledged in the Brussels donor conference last month, and the additional $72m pledged by the UN Security Council would greatly boost the AU force and the Somali security forces, he noted.

"Soldiers of the Somali Government army are now being paid. For the last two months, they have received salaries."

On fears that the Somali government might collapse and hardline Islamist might take over the strategic country in the Horn of Africa, Kiyonga said that the situation was "serious but manageable".