By Joshua Kato
in Somalia

JULY was a fruitful month militarily for peacekeepers and Somali government forces, a spokesman said.

AMISOM, as the peace-keepers are called, and the transitional government forces took over six sites from al-Shabaab militants and reduced the bases from which the Islamists had launched attacks against their side, Maj. Ba-Hoku Barigye, the AMISOM spokeperson, told The New Vision team in Mogadishu on Tuesday.

The peacekeepers, comprising Burundi and Ugandan troops, also secured the State House and Parliament, captured Urubah and Juba hotels and are now in control of the key positions near the African village in the city centre.

On Monday, Guinea and Djibouti delegates at the just-concluded African Union summit in Kampala pledged to send 4,000 troops to beef up the 6,000 peacekeepers in Mogadishu.

“We have made inroads into the northern part of Mogadishu, which was not the case before,” Barigye said.
Over 18 al-Shabaab fighters and an unknown number of civilians were killed in the battle. One AMISOM Kaspir armored personnel carrier was also damaged.

When AMISOM forces occupied Juba Hotel, one of the largest buildings in Mogadishu, al-Shabaab fighters withdrew to the interior ministry building, a kilometre away, from where they were launching attacks on the peacekeepers.

“That building is a problem to us,” Col. Michael Odonga, the Ugandan contingent commander, said during a visit to the site last Saturday.

By Monday morning, however, the peacekeepers had taken control of the building from the Islamists who have claimed responsibility for the bomb explosions which killed 77 people in Kampala about two weeks ago.
Under urban warfare, tall buildings are like high grounds in rural warfare. AMISOM was constantly under attack from the top of Juba Hotel and bank buildings.

“They used to fire at the airport, the seaport and Base Camp, the main AMISOM base in Mogadishu,” Ondoga said during an interview at Juba Hotel.

A source intimated that AMISOM had asked for authority from the transitional government to attack the building with heavier weapons, but the request was turned down.

However, al-Shabaab continued using it to snipe at AMISOM forces in Juba Hotel and that is when the decision to attack it was made.
See pictorial on Page 5