Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The government of Burundi has accepted an AU request to send a brigade of 1,700 soldiers to Somalia," Burundi's deputy army chief Godefroid Niyombare told AFP.
He said the troops will form part of a second phase of deployment to be in Somalia by April.
"We have more than one month to prepare our soldiers. They will therefore be ready at the required time," he said.
Last month the African Union said Burundi had offered to send troops to Somalia, without giving details.
Meanwhile Ugandan army spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda said Wednesday that some of the 1,500 Ugandan troops headed for Somalia would begin deploying next week.
"We are moving in next week," Ankunda told AFP, adding that Kampala would give further details in a news conference on Sunday.
He did not give an exact date, but said the soldiers would leave any time after the weekend and that the first 200 soldiers would go to Mogadishu, the scene of almost daily attacks.
The Somali capital has seen a rise in violence since the interim government, backed by Ethiopian troops, toppled an Islamist movement late last year.
The government accuses remnants of the Islamists for carrying out the attacks that have killed dozens and forced thousands of residents to flee.
On Tuesday, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called on the Somali insurgents, to spare the lives of the peacekeepers, who they have vowed to kill.
So far, the AU has only managed to raise around half of the required 8,000 troops for Somalia.
Other troop-contributing countries have yet to announce deployment dates but Nigeria, which has pledged 850 soldiers, said its forces would move in by April at the latest.
Other possible troop contributors are Malawi and Ghana.
Somalia has lacked an effective central authority since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre that plunged the country into cycles of vicious bloodletting.
Source: AFP, Feb 28, 2007