WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2009-05-19 Time: 15:00:03 Posted By: Jan
Kampala – UGANDAN soldiers serving on the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) are safe, the commander of the Land Forces, Maj. Gen. Katumba Wamala, has said.
Henry Mukasa reports that there has been an upsurge of fighting in Somalia, with extremist Islamist fighters closing in on the capital, Mogadishu, after capturing two towns in the last two days.
“They are safe. There is no cause for alarm,” Katumba said on phone yesterday.
“The areas they are manning are safe. We have not had any challenge to our positions.”
With three battalions, Ugandans make up the bulk of the peacekeeping force. They are stationed at the international airport, Mogadishu Port and the presidential palace, known as Villa Somalia.
Sierra Leone and Burundi last week pledged to send one battalion each to Somalia, boosting AMISOM to over 5,000, but it is not clear when they will arrive.
Hard-line Islamists have on several occasions warned of reprisals against AMISOM soldiers, whom they consider invaders.
Meanwhile, Islamist insurgents seized another strategic town north of Mogadishu yesterday, Reuters reports.
Witnesses said hundreds of gunmen from Hizbul Islam marched into Mahaday and took control without firing a shot.
“We have captured the town peacefully,” Hassan Mahdi, Hizbul Islam’s spokesman, told Reuters by telephone.
Earlier, on Sunday, fighters of another hardline group, al Shabaab, seized the town or Jowhar, 90km north of Mogadishu.
The forces of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, backed by AMISOM, now only control parts of the city and central region after two weeks of fighting.
Human rights workers say the clashes have killed at least 172 civilians and wounded 528.
Jowhar is Ahmed’s hometown and links the capital to Somalia’s volatile central region. Mahaday is 23km north of Jowhar.
“Masked Islamists are on the streets,” resident Fatima Hussein told Reuters.
“They are not speaking to anyone there was no fighting, the pro-government forces left last night.”
In the central town of Mahas, witnesses said Shabaab fighters beheaded a local elder and burnt his body on Sunday.
“We have carried his bones and some of his burnt flesh and had a burial this morning,” resident Ahmed Farah told Reuters.
“They always do this when they want to terrorise residents.”
Defence minister Crispus Kiyonga on Friday described the situation in Mogadishu as “serious but manageable”.
He had just returned from an African Union meeting in Addis Ababa, which agreed to set up a mechanism to identify the “spoilers” and seek sanctions against them. Sanctions, he said, could include travel bans and international arrest warrants.
The UN envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdalla, on Friday talked of 300 to 400 foreigners fighting alongside al Shabaab, who also supply the Islamists with heavy weaponry.
Neighbouring states and Western security forces fear the country could become a haven for al Qaeda-linked extremists.
Somali Sources told Sunday Vision that Islamist fighters come from Afghanistan and Iran while others are Somalis from the Diaspora who previously lived in the US and Europe.
The last two years of fighting have killed at least 17,700 civilians and driven more than one million from their homes. More than three million people survive on emergency food aid.
Somali pirates have taken advantage of the chaos to launch bolder attacks on shipping. Nearly 30 hijackings this year have put it on course to be the worst ever.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 18 May 2009
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200905190088.html?viewall=1