Suicide Bombers in Somalia Attack AU Peacekeepers

Sept. 18 (EIRNS)—An extremist group, Shabab, which claims to be Islamic, but is operating against the first moderate Islamic provisional government in Somalia since that nation's 1991 descent into "failed state" status, yesterday detonated two suicide car bombs inside the headquarters area of the African Union (AU) Peacekeepers headquarters at the Mogadishu Airport.

The AU peacekeeping force is the critical element which is keeping the provisional government alive. Its targetting is a critical feature of the British imperial plans to keep the Horn of Africa nations around Sudan unstable. The bombers hit the headquarters at the time that a meeting was being held by the peacekeeping leadership, to map out plans to help expand the government's control in Mogadishu. This suggests that those who organized the suicide bombing were privy to inside information.

Shabab used two UN vehicles it had previously seized, to create the suicide bombs. Seventeen of the 21 people killed were AU peacekeepers, including five Ugandans and 12 Burundians, according to reports. A Burundi general was one of those killed; the Ugandan commander of the force was injured. Security had permitted the two vehicles to enter the secure area because of their UN markings. Somali Defense Minister Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad said that Shabab had seized more UN vehicles in recent months, and is building eight more car-bombs.

Radicals from Pakistan and Afghanistan, among other places, have been coming to Somalia to introduce what, for Somalia, are new terrorist technologies. Before the 2007 Ethiopian military intervention into Somalia, supported from the United States by Dick Cheney, there had never been a suicide bombing in Somalia, despite the chaotic situation there since 1991. Shabab also receives ample funding from British hot-money centers in the Arab Gulf, according to reports.

Shabab diverted attention from the strategic nature of the bombing attack by claiming that it was carried out as revenge for a Sept. 14 U.S. helicopter raid in Somalia which killed a Kenyan suspect who was reputedly involved in the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya. A U.S. logistics company at the Mogadishu Airport was also a target of the bombing.