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Africa Horn

Somalia rebels threaten Uganda & Burundi

2009-10-24

[Al Arabiya Latest] Somalia's hardline Shabaab insurgents said they will attack the capitals of Burundi and Uganda in revenge for rocket attacks by peacekeepers from those countries that killed at least 30 people in Mogadishu.

"We shall make their people cry. We'll attack Bujumbura and Kampala ... We will move our fighting to those two cities and we shall destroy them," Sheikh Ali Mohamed Hussein, a senior Shabaab commander, told reporters late on Thursday in Mogadishu.

" We shall make their people cry. We'll attack Bujumbura and Kampala. We will move our fighting to those two cities and we shall destroy them "

Sheikh Ali Mohamed Hussein, a senior Shabaab commander

Burundi and Uganda both have about 2,500 peacekeepers in the Somali capital for the African Union's (AU) AMISOM force. On Thursday, they fired at least 35 rockets and mortar shells into the city's Bakara market area, where Shabaab gunmen were firing artillery at President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's plane.

The United States accuses the rebel group, which is fighting to topple Ahmed's fragile U.N.-backed administration, of being Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of Africa state.

Fighting in Somalia has killed 19,000 civilians since the start of 2007 and driven another 1.5 million from their homes, triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian emergencies.

Western security agencies say the Horn of Africa nation has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who are using it to plot attacks across the region and beyond.

Posted by:Fred

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