MOGADISHU (AFP) — Somali rebels attacked a camp of Ugandan peacekeepers from the African Union in Mogadishu overnight, triggering hours of heavy fighting that left at least one insurgent dead, the AU said Saturday.
"They fired rocket-propelled grenades into our base (in Mogadishu's K-4 neighbourhood), but we killed one of them. We have a duty to defend ourselves," AU spokesman Paddy Ankunda told AFP. "We are on alert now."
A resident in southern Mogadishu, where the camp is based, said he had seen one body. The clashes raged from midnight up to dawn.
"There was heavy fighting in K-4 area last night and this morning. I have seen a dead body in the area," said Muhsin Ali.
AU peacekeepers blocked roads in the area while joint Ethiopia and Somali forces patrolled neighbourhoods in southern Mogadishu, the main focus of recent fighting.
Rebels have killed five Ugandan troops since March when the country deployed 1,600 troops to Mogadishu under an AU mandate to bolster the weak transitional government.
The AU has failed to mobilise the 8,000 troops it pledged to deploy after many African nations balked in the face of escalating violence.
Bloody clan feuds and power struggles, which intensified after the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, have undermined repeated bids to stabilise Somalia.
In the 1990s at least 140 UN peacekeepers were killed before the mission was abandoned in 1995, and 18 US special forces also died in 1993.
Early this month, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said deploying UN peacekeepers in Somalia again was not a "a realistic and viable option" and floated the idea of "coalition of the willing." No country has offered to take a lead.
The latest raid came days after a fugitive commander of the Islamist-led insurgents urged his fighters to step up attacks on the Ugandan troops.
Commander Adan Hashi Ayro, accused of links with the Al Qaeda, told his fighters on Wednesday to kill the peacekeepers in a bid to drive pro-government forces out of Somalia.
Islamist forces were swept out of Mogadishu earlier this year by mainly Ethiopian forces but many have remained to carry out a bloody insurgency in the capital that continues to claim lives on an almost daily basis.
The UN and the European parliament have called for a probe into alleged war crimes in Mogadishu after dozens of people were killed and some 170,000 displaced in crackdowns on insurgents in recent weeks.
The clashes have deepened the humanitarian crisis dogging the nation, with areas on the outskirts of the city struggling to cope with the latest influx of displaced people.
Aid groups have complained that insecurity has blocked them from accessing civilians trapped in the city.
The Shabelle region -- Somalia's breadbasket -- has also suffered its worst crop in 13 years, leaving nearly a million people on the edge of starvation.
In the latest incident, a policeman and a civilian died when a roadside bomb struck a passenger bus in the capital's Medina neighbourhood on Saturday, police said.
"A policeman and a civilian were killed in the attack while five other people were injured," police official Ali Hashi Dhabare told AFP.
Witnesses said the explosion targeted a police patrol truck.
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