Nairobi, September 20: The United Nations is investigating the use of its vehicles by suicide bombers who killed 17 African Union peacekeepers at their main base in Somalia, a senior official said on Saturday.
The Somali government warned on Friday that Islamist rebels from the al Shabaab group had six more stolen U.N. cars primed with explosives ready for suicide attacks. ¨ûID:nLI195515
“There are very large numbers of U.N. vehicles in Somalia that have been used for a variety of projects,” Mark Bowden, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, told Reuters.
He said the United Nations had been given the chassis number of one of the vehicles used in Thursday’s blasts. “We are trying to trace whether it’s a U.N. vehicle,” Bowden added.
President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said the attack, which followed Monday’s killing of one of Africa’s most wanted al Qaeda suspects by U.S. special forces, would not deter his government and he called on the world to send it more help.
“The bombing was shocking … I urge the world to assist the starving Somali people,” Ahmed told reporters in a news conference at his hilltop Villa Somalia palace on Saturday.
He said his administration had given Washington permission to hunt down Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan — a 28-year-old Kenyan wanted over the 2002 truck bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya that killed 15 people — because it could not catch him.
–Agencies