Burundi on Thursday said the killing of one of its soldiers in Somalia last month will not deter its peacekeeping operations, but that such attacks were a shame on the insurgents.
Holding a press conference at Mogadishu airport before boarding a plane home, the visiting Burundian defense minister Lieutenant General Niyoyamkama Germain said the suicide attack on his soldiers was deplorable.
“We are here to help the Somalis and support them restore security but not to fight with them. It is a shame on the insurgents to target friends, who came to help their people. They have to refrain from treating us in such a bad way,” said General Germain.
The attack, which was claimed by the Alshabab armed Islamist militants, was the worst yet against the AU troops in Mogadishu.
During a four-day secret visit to Somalia, the Burundian minister held a meeting with President Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed and his premier Nur Hassan Husein.
“My meeting with the Somali leaders was aimed at conveying a message from the Burundian President to his Somali counterpart, and also we discussed issues like security and the role of Burundi in the AU peace mission in Somalia,” he said at the press conference.
Burundi has deployed some 850 soldiers in Somalia as part of an African Union peacekeeping force and plans to increase the number to 1,700.
So far, Burundi and Uganda are the only countries that have sent troops to Somalia, where the pan-African bloc expects to eventually deploy some 8,000 peacekeepers.
Meanwhile, at least three government soldiers were killed in the latest of a spate of attacks by insurgents against the government solders and their Ethiopian backers.
“Two police officers were also killed and another wounded when armed insurgents on Thursday morning raided a government checkpoint at Lego village, around 130 kilometers south-west of Mogadishu,” the deputy governor of Lower-Shabelle region Mohamed Mohamud told APA by telephone.
In separate incident north of Mogadishu, a police officer was killed and two others wounded when armed insurgents attacked government soldiers collecting tax from a livestock market north of the city.
“The insurgents raided the market and clashed with government soldiers who were collecting tax, one of the soldiers was killed and two others wounded and the insurgents briefly controlled the market,” said an eye-witness Abdulahi Mohamed Rage.
Source African Press Agency
