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KAMPALA (AFP) – The United States and Norway have pledged reconstruction aid to Somalia’s transitional government, an African Union official said Monday on the sidelines of the AU summit in Uganda.

The aid would be for “the reconstruction of the Somalian state and the performance of its services so that the population can feel there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” AU peace and security commissioner Ramtane Lamamra said.

Lamamra did not give an amount for the aid.

The Kampala meeting has drawn together African countries affected by the conflict in Somalia, where Islamist rebels are trying to topple the Western-backed government, as well as international delegates.

US Assistant Secretary for African affairs, Johnnie Carson, did not mention aid in his comments to the media at the end of a session in which he participated.

“The US and Norwegian governments have indicated that they are going to directly help the Somalian government,” said Lamamra. “This aid will be financial so the government can reorganise state services to become more effective.”

The summit, which ends Tuesday, is expected to confirm a reinforcement of the AU’s military presence in Somalia to support the government against Islamist insurgent Shebab militants who control most of the country.

Diplomats and experts say the fragile administration of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed should also be trying to gain the support of the population by convincing people it can improve their living conditions.

KAMPALA (AFP) – Leaders of the African Union agreed at a summit on Monday to reinforce the AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia to counter Shebab insurgents, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin told AFP.

“This summit has just approved the requests made by the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD),” a six-nation east African grouping, which had asked for 2,000 extra troops, said.

They would reinforce the 6,000 Ugandan and Burundian soldiers already in Mogadishu for the African Union.

He added: “The summit has approved calls for reinforcing the budget of AMISOM (the AU mission in Somalia) and its equipment.”

The Shebab, an Islamist extremist group that controls most of central and western, Somalia, has claimed responsibility for two bomb attacks in Uganda’s capital Kampala on July 11.

They killed 76 people gathered to watch telecasts of the World Cup final.

It has said the aim of the attacks was to force the withdrawal of AU troops, who have been helping to sustain Somalia’s transitional government, whose authority is limited only to a few districts of the capital Mogadishu.

“We are now at a stage in which all Africans understand the urgency of the situation,” Seyoum said.

“We all think that AMISOM must be reinforced immediately, along with the means of action of the Somali transitional government.”

The African Union summit, which formally ends Tuesday, acknowledged that “whatever reinforcement of the military force there is, it would not be able to resolve by itself the Somali problem overall,” Seyoum said.

“The priority must therefore be to reinforce the security forces, the police, and the civil and financial institutions of the transitional government,” he added.

African Union commission chief Jean Ping said earlier that Guinea was ready to send a battalion to Somalia and predicted that the mission could soon swell to 10,000 soldiers.

On the sidelines of the Kampala summit, US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Johnnie Carson said more troops were needed on the ground in Somalia in order to defeat extremists who pose a regional and international threat.

“There is no doubt there is a need for more troops,” Carson said. “We in Washington have committed ourselves to support additional troops on the ground in the same fashion that we have supported Burundi and Ugandan troops.”

Even as the summit was unfolding, African Union troops in Mogadishu launched an attack on Monday to repulse Shebab militants from two sites in the north of Mogadishu from where they fired mortars at government targets.

At least 11 people were killed on all sides, officials said.

In another corner of the continent, meanwhile, Al Qaeda’s North African arm — Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) — said it had killed a 78-year-old French hostage in Mali.

The African Union commissioner for peace and security, Ramtane Lamamra, said it was only “a question of a few short weeks” before the reinforcements arrive in Somalia and render AMISOM — which deployed in March 2007 — “more robust”.

He added that he was “reasonably optimistic” that an African Union for five helicopters from its international partners would be fulfilled.

South Africa — which has been asked to send warships to check the import of weapons to the Shebab via Kismayo port — “said it would be ready to do everything it is asked from it” by IGAD and the African Union, Seyoum said.

The Shebab leadership has proclaimed its allegiance to Osama bin Laden and the group’s attacks in Kampala — its first attacks outside Somalia — renewed fears that the Horn of Africa country could become a safe haven for Al Qaeda.

KAMPALA (AFP) – Ugandan forces imposed tight security in the capital on Saturday as more than 30 heads of state began converging on Kampala for an African Union summit barely two weeks after deadly suicide attacks.

Police and military deployments in Kampala are regularly enhanced during international conferences, but after the July 11 bombings that left 76 dead, security is such that entering a shopping mall is similar to boarding a plane.

“Following the recent attack in Uganda, we have stepped up our security measures to a level that has never been seen,” Deputy Foreign Minister Okello Oryem told AFP.

“Unfortunately, I think it has infringed on people’s freedom to enjoy themselves,” he added.

Kampala was chosen to host the 15th African Union heads of state summit, which opens on Sunday, long before the region’s deadliest attacks in 12 years gave the venue extra significance.

It is an AU force that Uganda has led in Mogadishu since 2007 to support the fragile Somali transition government. That role was the reason the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab group claimed responsibility for the Kampala attacks in a bid to force Uganda to withdraw from Somalia.

The Ugandan authorities immediately responded by assuring its fellow AU members that the summit was still on and should serve as a platform to muster more regional and international support for efforts to root out the Somali insurgents.

At a popular city centre shopping mall with several restaurants and Kampala’s only cinema, motorists and pedestrians are now forced to join long queues while they wait for their handbags, bodies and vehicles to be checked.

A security official this week got into a verbal spat with a would-be shopper who was frustrated by the delays.

“Others are not complaining!” the officer shouted, silencing the woman who was irked about her bag being thoroughly taken apart and inspected.

“All this is to ensure that all the delegates that are here and all the Ugandans do have 100 percent security and there is no repetition of what happened on 7/11,” Oryem said, justifying the inconveniences.

Shortly after the attacks, Uganda’s president balked at the notion that the summit should be rescheduled or relocated.

“Africa Union not take place because of this incidence? No! That is all rubbish,” Yoweri Museveni told reporters at his country home in western Uganda.

“The African Union is not going to take place in a pitch,” he added, referring to the rugby club which was one of the two spots targeted by the blasts on July 11 as crowds gathered to watch the football World Cup final.

A visible reminder of this contrast is the massive deployment of security personnel along the road that connects Kampala and the resort hosting the AU meeting.

Calling in re-enforcements from the anti-riot squads, the regular and military police, Uganda has positioned a two-person unit every 50 meters (55 yards) on both sides of the six-kilometre (3.7-mile) road.

A spokesman for the Speke Resort that is hosting the AU meeting said that given the plethora of screenings and checks required to access the summit grounds, it is possible a high speed traffic accident poses the worst security risk.

“You have all these convoys, driving at break-neck speeds, and I think the speeds they are driving at are a bit too excessive, especially when they are carrying nobody,” Timothy Bukumunhe told AFP.

“It’s like each driver has become a Michael Schumacher of sorts.”

The pre-summit meetings with foreign ministers from most African nations began on Thursday, while heads of state and other foreign dignitaries, including US Attorney General Eric Holder are expected to land in Kampala on Saturday and Sunday.

NAIROBI, Kenya – African Union peacekeepers are indiscriminately shelling residential areas of Somalia’s capital, according to internal AU reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

The evaluation was made months before Somali militants claimed they carried out twin bombings that killed 76 people in Uganda last week — attacks the insurgents said were to avenge civilian deaths caused by AU soldiers.

The series of reports, stamped for “Internal Use Only” and issued from April to June, said that if indiscriminate shelling continues, the AU mission will lose the support of the Somali people.

Civilians have suffered through nearly two decades of violent chaos in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, since the country’s government was overthrown in 1991. Al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militants now control large portions of the capital, and much of the country’s southern and central regions.

The AU force, known as AMISOM, has long been criticized by human rights groups for civilian deaths in Somalia, and the internal reports seen by AP show the mission itself is aware of the problem.

In a report issued in May, the AU expressed concern that the force “may not be adequately giving the issue of indiscriminate shelling of civilians the urgent attention it deserves.”

A similar report in June said AMISOM “continues to underestimate the importance of being seen to address this critical issue.”

An AU spokesman, Maj. Barigye Bahoku, denied Wednesday that AU forces kill civilians, saying the deaths are caused by extremists who attack government and AU troops.

“Too many civilians are caught in the crossfire, but the responsibility for this lies on the destructive extremists who unleash reckless attacks on (government) and AMISOM forces,” Bahoku said.

Al-Shabab, the Muslim militant group that claimed responsibility for the July 11 attacks on a Kampala rugby club and restaurant packed with people watching the World Cup final on television, had long threatened to strike outside of Somalia’s borders. Uganda is one of two African nations that contribute troops to the more than 5,000-member AU force in Somalia.

“We warned Uganda not to deploy troops to Somalia; they ignored us,” said Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage, al-Shabab’s spokesman. “We warned them to stop massacring our people, and they ignored that. The explosions in Kampala were only a minor message to them. … We will target them everywhere if Uganda does not withdraw from our land.”

He said Burundi, which also contributes to the AU force, could also face attacks.

Shelling is a near-daily occurrence in Somalia’s capital, and international rights groups have decried the deadly impact on civilians.

Human Rights Watch said in a report in April that major parties to the conflict have carried out “numerous indiscriminate attacks … with terrible consequences for the civilian population.”

The report accused Somali government troops and African peacekeepers of lobbing mortar rounds toward areas considered the source of incoming fire, or “simply bombarding areas such as Bakara market that are opposition strongholds.”

“Such attacks, while of limited military value, cause considerable loss of civilian life and property damage,” Human Rights Watch said.

Somalia’s former state minister for defense, Yusuf Mohamed Siyad, told the AP he once witnessed more than 60 artillery shells, missiles and mortars fired into residential areas and the Bakara market in response to three mortars fired by militants.

Siyad resigned from his position last month because he said the government had failed to deliver either security or services to the public.

Earlier this month, after an artillery shell killed families who sought shelter in a building in another popular market, the head of Mogadishu’s ambulance service said he believed the round was too strong to have been fired by Islamist militants.

“It was so strong that it obliterated the building,” Ali Muse said. “The scene was scary. Human flesh was scattered everywhere.”

KAMPALA (AFP) – Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab Thursday vowed further attacks after two deadly bombings in Uganda, as Kampala said it would send more troops to boost the African Union force in Mogadishu.

Sunday’s bomb attacks on entertainment spots in Kampala where crowds were watching the World Cup final killed at least 73 people and underscored the risk posed by the Somali rebel movement to the entire region.

“What happened in Kampala is just the beginning,” elusive Shebab leader Mohamed Abdi Godane said in an audio message broadcast on several Mogadishu radio stations.

The Shebab — fighting Somalia’s Western-backed transitional government — said the blasts were in retaliation for the presence of more than 3,000 Ugandan troops in the embattled African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

“We are telling all Muslims and particularly the people of Mogadishu that those martyred in AMISOM shelling will be avenged,” he added.

Godane said the Kampala attacks were carried out by a unit named the Saleh Nabhan Brigade after a Kenyan-born Al-Qaeda operative allegedly behind 2002 anti-Israeli attacks in Mombasa and killed in a suspected US air raid last year.

Uganda could provide 2,000 more soldiers for the African Union force, an army spokesman said Thursday, following a decision this month by a regional body to bring AMISOM to its full strength of 8,100.

“We are capable of providing the required force if other countries fail to do so,” spokesman Felix Kulayigye told AFP. “I should say, however, that I think it is appropriate that other countries contribute.”

The United States welcomed Uganda’s decision and pledged to boost its own aid to the force, the main obstacle preventing the Shebab from seizing full control of Mogadishu.

“We have reviewed, since Sunday, the support that we’re providing to AMISOM. We are going to beef that up,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.

He also said 63 FBI agents assisting in the probe of Sunday’s attacks had arrived in the region.

The Kampala attacks, the deadliest in the region since the 1998 bombings against the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, spoiled the continent’s World Cup party and drew global condemnation.

Analysts said they further raised the Shebab’s jihadist profile but their immediate objective was to force a withdrawal of AMISOM, which also has 2,500 troops from Burundi.

With fewer than 7,000 troops on the ground, AMISOM has enabled the tenuous survival of Somalia’s Western-backed President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed but failed to weaken the insurgents.

“We are going to go on the offensive for all those who did this,” Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Wednesday of the weekend attacks.

“We can join to build up the strength of that force to 20,000 so that working with the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia we can eliminate the terrorists,” he said.

“We were just in Mogadishu to guard the port, the airport and the State House. Now they have mobilised us to look for them.”

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, whose 2006 invasion of Somalia failed to suppress the Shebab before withdrawing early last year, has said he would not send troops back in but nevertheless advocated a tough approach.

“There is absolutely no hope of engaging in negotiations with this group. There is no option but to work for their total annihilation,” Meles told state television Thursday.

Ugandan investigators were meanwhile still trying to determine the exact circumstances of Sunday’s attacks in Kampala and identities of all the victims.

A senior official has said that at least one of the blasts was a suicide attack while police said they had already arrested six suspects.