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Africa Horn | ||
EU raises security level for Somalia team after Kenya attack | ||
2013-09-27 | ||
BRUSSELS -- The European Union has increased security precautions for its military advisers in Somalia after the deadly attack by Somali Islamists on a Kenyan shopping mall, it said on Thursday.
The EU's top military officer, French General Patrick de Rousiers, said it was routine to raise the alert level. "Of course we do this. Everybody does this, every embassy does this. Everyone is concerned," he told a news conference. The EU has had no word of any planned attack on its team and no EU member state had asked to pull its staff out of Somalia, de Rousiers said, but he noted that al Shabaab struck the main U.N. compound in Mogadishu in June when 22 people were killed. The EU has 52 personnel deployed at Mogadishu international airport where they advise Somali authorities. Training of Somali soldiers has taken place mainly in Uganda, where the EU has 68 experts, but it plans to move the entire operation to Mogadishu by early next year. The team, drawn from 12 EU countries, expects to have trained some 3,600 Somali soldiers by the end of this year.
"Do we go for drug-trafficking in the Antilles (Caribbean), do we go for support for what is already ongoing in the Gulf of Guinea? The success story in the fight against piracy needs us to have a discussion on what next," he said. | ||
Posted by:Steve White |