Somali who attacked peacekeeping base had access

A suicide bomber who attacked an African Union peacekeeping base in the Somali capital was a local who regularly delivered supplies to the soldiers inside, an official said Monday.

Eleven Burundian soldiers were killed in the attack Sunday in Mogadishu, for which an extremist Islamic group called al-Shabab has claimed responsibility. It was the deadliest attack on African Union forces during the two-year deployment in Somalia, Geofrey Mugumya, director of the African Union's Peace and Security Department, said Monday.

The suicide bomber was a Somali contractor who delivered supplies and had easy access to the base, Mugumya said.

"When soldiers converged to get the supplies as usual, then the bomb was detonated," Mugumya said.

Mugumya, a Ugandan diplomat, said two Somalis were in the vehicle. He said the African Union will investigate the attack and the peacekeeping force will be more vigilant.

In Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, Nicolas Bwakira, the union's envoy to Somalia, said 22 soldiers have been killed in Somalia to date.

The group's Peace and Security Council met in the Ethiopian capital in an emergency session for three hours Monday but its deliberations were closed to reporters.

Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed "has requested us to continue to support his government and to increase the number of troops," Bwakira told journalists in Nairobi. "And indeed we are in the process of doing that."

Bwakira said the African Union will soon increase its troops to 8,000 from the current 3,500, though in the past such promises by officials have not always been borne out.

The peacekeeping force has a restricted mandate to guard key government installations in Mogadishu. It has not been involved in fighting Islamic militants in the capital, battles that have killed thousands of civilians over the past two years.

But hardline groups still view the peacekeepers as an occupying force.

Al-Shabab has threatened to focus attacks on African Union troops, now that Ethiopian forces have left Mogadishu after two years. The U.S. State Department considers al-Shabab a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaida, something the group has denied.

The Somali government controls virtually no territory.

In Somalia, a security official said gunmen released a Pakistani man Monday they had kidnapped a day earlier. No ransom was paid and the gunmen freed the man after elders talked to the kidnappers, said Abdullahi Said Samatar, security minister for the semiautonomous northeastern region of Puntland. Samatar said he did not have any details about the man who was kidnapped.

Source: AP