04/10/08 (B468) Shabelle / Des tireurs prennent un avion de l’UA pour cible à l’aéroport de Mogadiscio // Somali Islamists target AU plane in Mogadishu

Islamists attacked African peacekeepers plane that has landed at Mogadishu airport, sparking response shelling from AMISOM troops that sent many fleeing the city in Somalia’s escalating insurgency, witnesses said on Saturday.

« We have no hope now and I think this is the end of Mogadishu, » mother-of-seven Fatuma Kassim said, joining a stream of residents escaping the coastal capital.

Several mortars have been hit in Madina district, after mortars have been hit in the airport a military plane arrived.

It’s yet unknown the causalities on the plane.

The insurgents have this month increasingly turned their fire on African Union (AU) troops in what analysts view as a tactic to prevent any further foreign intervention in the Horn of Africa nation, engulfed in civil conflict since 1991.

The African Union, whose 2,200 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers have done little to quell the war, said it suffered no casualties.

Resident, Aden Ismail, said a missile landed on a house in Dharkenley but he said that he wasn’t know any causalities since he was fleeing from the shelling.

« Then another mortar dropped and injured seven others. We could not take them to hospital because there were mortars everywhere, » he said.

We shall keep you posted as soon as the news on that incident is available.