The Ahlu Sunnha Waljama group, which earlier signed a power- sharing deal with the Somali government, said it fully supports the decision from the AU summit in the Ugandan capital last week to send reinforcement for the beleaguered African peacekeepers in Mogadishu.
Sheikh Mohamed Ahmed Shuriye, spokesman for (ASJ), called for the strengthening of the peacekeepers AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in order to avert "continuing bloodshed in Somalia".
"We call on the international community to help stop the continuing bloodshed in Somalia by changing the mandate of AMISOM troops in Somalia from peacekeeping to peace enforcement so that the soldiers will put an end to the killing of innocent civilians by the anti-peace elements," Shuriye told reporters in Mogadishu.
The AU leaders who met in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, last week did not change the AMISOM forces' mandate, saying the current mandate was enough.
The ASJ members have been fighting alongside Somali government forces against the forces of the radical Al Shabaab group in the capital Mogadishu and in central Somalia provinces where ASJ managed to gain control of a number of key towns and villages.
The Somali government which controls only a few sections of Mogadishu signed a power-sharing pack with the group in April. The deal resulted in the formation of a government of national unity where key positions were given to the group.
The moderate Sufi Islam group pledged to work with the almost 6, 000 AMISOM peacekeeping forces deployed in the Somali capital Mogadishu. The peacekeepers are mainly from Uganda and Burundi.
AU leaders agreed to send further 4,000 soldiers from Djibouti, Guinea and Uganda, which pledged to dispatch 2,000 more soldiers to Mogadishu.
Source: FOCUS Information Agency
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