African Union peacekeepers help Somali women with water supplies. AMISOM says humanitarian activities have made the peacekeepers popular among the people of the war-torn country. (Photo: AMISOM)
(CNSNews.com) – Jihadists in Somalia responsible for the deaths of 11 African Union peacekeepers on Sunday targeted their victims while they were attending a church service, according to a spokesman for the Islamists.
 
“Two of our men were martyred,” said Muktar Robow, spokesman for the notorious Al Shabaab group. “They inflicted heavy damage on soldiers at a church.”
 
The attack came shortly after the emergence of a new message, purportedly from the fugitive al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, offering encouragement to “mujahideen” (Islamic warriors) in Somalia and urging them to fight against “crusader invaders.”
 
The A.U. peacekeeping force AMISOM currently comprises soldiers from Burundi and Uganda, both majority Christian countries.
 
The A.U. said in a statement that 11 Burundian soldiers were killed and another 15 seriously injured in the “criminal and cowardly” attack, which occurred at a compound for peacekeepers, at the former National University building in Mogadishu.
 
It was the deadliest attack on peacekeepers in the lawless Horn of Africa country since the AMISOM force was deployed there in March 2007, operating under an A.U. mandate approved by the U.N. Security Council.
 
The A.U. initially reported that the compound had come under mortar attack, but Robow in interviews with Mogadishu radio stations described an attack by two suicide bombers.
 
The first “holy fighter,” he said, had detonated his bomb hidden in a jacket, killing some peacekeepers. Then the second bomber, who had been waiting in a car packed with explosives, launched his attack at the compound gate, killing more soldiers, he said.
 
Al Shabaab (“Youth”) is one of several groups fighting for control of Somalia, which has been wracked by anarchy since 1991. It includes foreign jihadists in its ranks, and according to the U.S. government has links to al-Qaeda.
 
Al Shabaab has spent the past two years fighting Ethiopian forces which entered the country in 2006 to uphold a shaky transitional government. Since the beginning of 2007, more than 16,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting and a million displaced.
 
Under a U.N.-brokered agreement, the Ethiopians withdrew last month and newly-elected President Sharif Ahmed, described as a “moderate Islamist,” is now trying to consolidate government control and win support from the various warring groups.
 
But Al Shabaab has vowed to continue fighting, saying it will only support the government if it enforces Islamic law (shari’a), orders the peacekeepers – whom it regularly describes as “crusaders” – to leave, and gives ministerial posts to Al Shabaab members.
 
Sunday’s attack came three days after a gathering in Mogadishu of Islamic clerics ended with a call for AMISOM peacekeepers to leave Somalia within 120 days and for shari’a to be implemented. They also urged Islamist forces to stop fighting to enable the other demands to be met.
 
An AMISOM spokesman rejected the withdrawal demand, saying the new government under Sharif would need the peacekeepers’ support until the country was stabilized.
 
The 3,400-member AMISOM force is currently made up of Burundians and Ugandans. Soldiers from Nigeria, Kenya and Malawi have been pledged but not yet deployed. Before Sunday’s attack, 11 soldiers from the two contributing nations had been killed in previous attacks.
 
At the weekend the NEFA Foundation, a terrorism watchdog, released a translation of a new audio recording by al-Zawahiri, dealing prominently with recent developments in Somalia.
 
In it, the al-Qaeda terrorist hailed the departure of the Ethiopians – or in his words, the “expulsion of the invaders, the enemies of Islam and their agents, from wide regions of Somalia.”
 
He called their withdrawal, along with the spreading of shari’a, “a step on the path of victory of Islam.”
 
But Zawahiri also warned supporters in Somalia not to accept the government – which he characterized as part of a U.S. plot to destroy Islam in Somalia – or the presence of the peacekeepers.
 
For the mujahideen, he said, “there is no difference between the Ethiopian invaders and the Kenyan or Ugandan or Burundian invaders or the African Union forces or other such names.
 
“All of them are infidel invader forces which have invaded the Muslims’ lands, and it’s the individual duty of every Muslim to expel them from there.”