Wednesday October 25, 20172
By Harun Maruf
FILE - African Union (AU) soldiers stand with their armored vehicles near a checkpoint on the eve of presidential elections in Mogadishu, Somalia, Feb. 7, 2017. Al-Shabab militants targeted an AU military vehicle Wednesday, leading to gunfire that left two Somali civilians, an African Union soldier and four al-Shabab militants dead.
Two Somali civilians, an African Union soldier and four al-Shabab militants were killed in an ambush early Wednesday on the outskirts of Mogadishu.
Gunfire followed the explosion of an improvised explosive device that targeted an AU military vehicle, witnesses and officials said.
AMISOM spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Wilson Rono told VOA Somali a Ugandan soldier was killed and a second soldier was seriously injured in the ambush. He said AMISOM troops exchanged gunfire with al-Shabab militants, killing four of them.
Residents at Arbiska corridor said AU troops fired into different directions after the explosion.
Rono confirmed two civilians were killed in the gunfire. One was said to be a watchman, and the other was an English school teacher named Jafar Ali Mohamed, who also worked as a journalist for a local radio station in Afgoye.
Rono said he did not know if the bullets that killed the two civilians were fired by peacekeepers or by al-Shabab.
The National Union of Somali Journalists, NUSOJ, said Mohamed is the fourth journalist killed in Somalia this year.
Mohamed worked for Dayah (Moon) radio, an FM station based in Afgoye.