African peacekeepers tread warily in Mogadishu

Snipers have taken over where bombers left off in Mogadishu, the war-wracked capital of Somalia where African Union peacekeepers are facing an uphill battle to counter the advance of Islamist insurgents.

Pinned-down peacekeepers here have orders to stay crouched behind their protective sandbags in the centre of Mogadishu.

"Otherwise, they'll take you out," said Lieutenant David Orejcho, one of 4,300 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers of the AMISOM force propping up the weak transitional government in the face of an Al Qaeda-inspired insurgency.

Orejcho's unit monitors the southeastern part of the city from a sandbag-cladded flat roof of an Arabian-style building with peeling paintwork.

"From here we can watch the whole avenue as far as the town centre," he says.

Watching is one thing, but moving about is fraught with danger for the peacekeepers from the moment they leave their headquarters at the airport and take the once grand avenue that leads into the heart of Mogadishu, now just a dusty track where the odd ramshackle vehicle weaves a path between potholes.

AMISOM's white armoured vehicles had regularly been targeted by IED's (improvised explosive devices) planted along the avenue, which only stopped when the peacekeepers set up an advance post.

A three-vehicle convoy rumbled through the dusty streets visiting this and other forward bases in the city on Wednesday.

Dubbed 'Migration" after the government department whose offices it occupies, it guards all the southeastern part of the city.

Next to it is a line of filthy huts where pro-government militia forces are slumped half-asleep.

The convoy continues on to Kilometre 4 or K4, a strategic roundabout where snipers or mortar fire targets Ugandan soldiers in a bullet-pocked building three or four times a week.

"If you control K4 you control Mogadishu; K4 gives you access to all the important parts of town," the head of the Ugandan detachment Captain Oscar Kuche said.

The AMISON soldiers retaliate to the insurgent firing with the battery of 82 mm mortars in front of the door.

Occasionally the AU troops are called to provide combat back-up for pro-government forces when they take on the Shebab Islamists whose stronghold in the Bakara market is situated just a few hundred metres away.

That support has put them in the cross-hairs of the insurgency.

At least 60 AMISOM peacekeepers have been killed since they were deployed in March 2007, charged with protecting strategic sites in the seaside capital such as the presidency, the port and the airport. A twin suicide bombing at their airport base killed 17 peacekeepers in September.

The thud of heavy weapons can be heard in the distance as the patrol moves through the dusty streets.

Seemingly indifferent to the threat, respectable middle-aged men chat in the shade of acacia trees and veiled women gather in front of a small shop.

A horn blares and two shots ring out: one of the gunners on the first AMISOM vehicle is trying to get a particularly stubborn mule to move off the road, to the great amusement of passengers crammed into nearby minibuses.

Somali insurgents launched a fresh offensive against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on May 7 sparking clashes that have left more than 250 dead and 120,000 displaced.

The Shebab militants have vowed to continue their jihad, or holy war, until the last foreign soldier is withdrawn from Somali soil.