The United Nations is investigating the use of its vehicles by suicide bombers who killed 17 African Union peacekeepers at their main base in Somalia, a senior official said today.
The Somali government warned yesterday that Islamist rebels from the al Shabaab group had six more stolen UN cars primed with explosives ready for suicide attacks.
"There are very large numbers of UN vehicles in Somalia that have been used for a variety of projects," Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia said. He said the United Nations had been given the chassis number of one of the vehicles used in Thursday's attacks. "We are trying to trace whether it's a UN vehicle," Bowden added.
President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said the attack, which followed Monday's killing of one of Africa's most wanted al-Qaeda suspects by US special forces, would not deter his government and he called on the world to send it more help.
"The bombing was shocking ... I urge the world to help the starving Somali people," President Ahmed told reporters in a news conference at his hilltop Villa Somalia palace on Saturday.
He said his administration gave Washington permission to hunt down Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan - a 28-year-old Kenyan wanted over the 2002 truck bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya that killed 15 people - because it could not catch him.
Mr Bowden said this week's attack on the peacekeepers' heavily-guarded base by Mogadishu airport would not weaken the UN's resolve to deliver aid to half the Somali population. But he said it could hinder operations on the ground. Insurgents overran UN compounds in Jowhar and Baidoa in May and July, looting supplies and stealing vehicles.
The al Shabaab rebel group, which Washington says is al-Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of Africa state, controls much of the south and parts of the capital.
Together with another group Hizbul Islam, it has been fighting government troops and the AU peacekeepers to impose its own strict version of sharia law throughout Somalia.
Today, al-Shabaab gunmen ordered traders at Mogadishu's sprawling Bakara Market to join their fight or quit their stalls, businessmen said. The rebels also demanded they contribute financially or in kind to their cause.
More than 18,000 Somalis have been killed in fighting since the start of 2007 and another 1.5 million left homeless.