A remote-controlled bomb killed four African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and a civilian on Wednesday in the Somali capital, in the kind of Iraq-style attack threatened by militant Islamist militants. Five peacekeepers and two children were also wounded in the blast targeting an AU convoy, which an AU security source said was the first such attack against the 1,600-strong Ugandan contingent -- who had so far only been shot at. The attack occurred just weeks after the Somali government declared victory over Islamic militants. The capital, Mogadishu, has been relatively calm since then, with sporadic bursts of deadly violence.
"Four of our solders were killed on the spot by the roadside bomb in north Mogadishu,'' said Capt. Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the AU force. "The roadside bomb's intention was to hit peacekeepers," Ankunda added.
The blast occurred near Mogadishu's old seaport. Uganda has about 1,400 troops in Somalia, officially as the vanguard of a larger African Union peacekeeping force although so far no other countries have sent reinforcements.
Government soldiers immediately cordoned off the neighbourhood -- a decrepit clutch of buildings inhabited mostly by refugees -- and began searching for the attackers. Suspicion immediately fell on Islamist militants who have waged an armed resistance campaign in the capital since the interim government and its Ethiopian allies ran them out of the anarchic city in late December. The explosion shattered a relative calm in Mogadishu that had endured since the end of two major battles between militants and the interim government, backed by its Ethiopian allies, that killed at least 1,300 people in March and April.
A witness who escaped injury despite being thrown into the air by the blast said the bomb was hidden in a pile of garbage. "I was walking when suddenly I heard a loud bang and found myself in the air. I fell a few metres away. I thought I was dead. I touched my whole body to see if I had any wounds," Muhyidin Ahmed, a 32-year-old father of six, told Reuters.
A man urinating in a bush near the bomb was blown to pieces, Ahmed said: "His flesh is scattered everywhere." Two children wounded while playing were rushed to hospital, he said.
The attack appeared to counter the interim government's assessment, shared by the Ethiopian government, that the resistance had been defeated and the city pacified. Use of roadside bombs -- a favourite weapon in Iraq -- is on the rise in Mogadishu. They have previously been used against the interim government and Ethiopian soldiers. "We have overcome many which were detected. This was a remote-controlled bomb," the AU security source said.
Security experts said the blast, taken alongside the assassinations of government officials and attacks on or near United Nations offices, pointed to a coalescing resistance. "They are not gone, they have just been scattered. The bad boys are resilient. They have changed tactics and they are going to do it a la Baghdad," said one expert who follows Somalia, but who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Also Wednesday, the aid group CARE International said two of its workers who were kidnapped last week in the semiautonomous Puntland region of Somalia have been released. Puntland has escaped much of the violence that has plagued southern Somalia, but banditry and piracy are a problem in the region. "The men are unharmed and eager to return to their families,'' said Beatrice Spadacini, spokeswoman for CARE International's regional office in the Kenyan capital.
Late on Tuesday near the central city of Jowhar, militants attacked the convoy of the Lower Shabelle region's governor, Mohamed Omar Deele, and killed four soldiers and two journalists travelling with them, a government soldier in the convoy said. Also on Tuesday, an unknown attacker threw a grenade into a cinema in Baardheere, southern Somalia, killing five and wounding 30.