HEADLINES:
R/€ 
R/£ Troops deployed in Somalia
October 13, 2008 Edition 1
MOGADISHU: More Burundian troops were deployed in Mogadishu yesterday to beef up an African Union peace force caught in the middle of a deepening Iraq-style insurgency.
A source at the main airport in Somalia's capital said a further 420 soldiers from Burundi arrived yesterday, a day after 400 Burundian peacekeepers landed.
Late yesterday, a suspected roadside bomb blasted an AU convoy, wounding at least two peacekeepers, witnesses said. It was not clear if the victims were the new arrivals.
The AU mission is guarding key sites in the city where a UN-backed interim government and its Ethiopian military allies are fighting Islamist rebels and heavily armed clan militia.
The multinational force, the African Union Mission in Somalia, was supposed to be 8 000 strong, but has been operating for months with just 2 200 soldiers, all from Uganda and Burundi. The weekend's deployments bring the strength of the force to 3 020.
Islamist Al-Shabaab rebels have vowed to shoot down any aircraft using the coastal airstrip and fired mortar shells at another AU military plane that touched down there on September 19. The peacekeepers have been targeted in a string of bombings and ambushes since the Islamists launched their rebellion early last year. The fighting has killed nearly 10 000 civilians. Seven Ugandan soldiers and one Burundian have died. - Reuters
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