Bodies of UPDF peacekeepers arrive today

Kampala

The bodies of the four UPDF soldiers killed in Somalia on Monday, will be flown back home today. The army spokesperson, Lt. Col. Felix Kulayigye, said yesterday that the bodies will arrive at Entebbe airbase at 2pm.

The Ugandan peacekeepers were killed in a bomb attack by the Somali militants, al Shabaab, at the presidential palace in Mogadishu. The Amisom spokesperson, Maj. Barigye Ba-Hoku, told Daily Monitor from Mogadishu the eight soldiers who were injured during the attack, had been evacuated to Nairobi for treatment. “It’s our policy to take the injured to places where they can get better facilities,” he said.

Another blast
He also said a bomb blast yesterday killed eight people near the Burundian Contingent headquarter. “The situation here is like tides in the ocean. It can be calm for a minute and then you hear a bomb going off,” he said. The Islamist militants have pledged to intensify attacks against the Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers during the month of Ramadhan. At least 6,000 peace keepers have been deployed in Somalia to support the beleaguered government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.

Col. Kulayigye dismissed reports that the Ethiopian forces had re-entered Somalia to reinforce the AU peacekeepers. “They are not there because I’m privy to all the information concerning our operations in Somalia and I can tell you that Ethiopia has no plans to re-enter Somalia to reinforce us,” he said. But the Ethiopian president Meles Zenawi has pledged to send his forces to Somalia “incase AU peacekeepers” are under threat. The Ethiopian forces bowed to pressure and withdrew from Somalia in January 2007 after overthrowing the Islamic Courts Union government run under sharia-law.