Thousands of African Union peacekeepers have been killed and hundreds more injured in Somalia since the forces began their work in that country in early 2007, the head of their mission told VOA Somali. The peacekeepers were deployed to help protect the government and installations from al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab militants…
Mohamed El-Amine Souef, the special representative of the chairperson of the African Union Commission for Somalia, disclosed the casualty figures during an interview last week with the “Investigative Dossier,” a VOA Somali radio program, “The troops were not well-prepared, and the administration was not even in Mogadishu. Many cases were not properly documented,” Souef said via the WhatsApp messaging platform.
Originally known as the African Union Mission in Somalia, the operation’s first deployment in Mogadishu came in March 2007 with troops from Uganda. In April 2022, the African Union Mission changed its name to the African Union Transition Mission, or ATMIS, with a view to withdrawing from Somalia by December 2024 after Somali forces assumed security responsibilities in the country. ATMIS currently has around 19,000 peacekeepers operating in Somalia.
The mission has documented around 4,000 casualties. According to the force officers who served in the mission, the casualties, including those disabled, can be as high as over 5,000,” Souef said, Souef confirmed estimated fatalities of 3,500. He said troops from Burundi and Uganda suffered the most casualties, This is the first time that an African Union official has commented publicly about the overall casualties of peacekeepers operating in Somalia.
