A few days after a US helicopters killed a top-level al-Qaeda suspect, Somali rebels have hit the African Union's main peacekeeper base in Mogadishu with two suicide car bombs. The UN has condemned the attack. Militants swore they would avenge the death of Kenya-born Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who was wanted over the 2002 bombing of a hotel full of Israeli tourists, and a simultaneous, but failed, missile attack on an Israeli airliner over Mombasa airport.
The latest bombings have killed about nine people, with at least seven more dead in artillery battles that broke out after the cars exploded. The AU mission deputy commander is said to have been among the dead. The car bombs follow mortar attacks on the city in the past week that left disabled former Somali veterans of a 1970s war with Ethiopia dead and wounded.
The moderate UN-backed Somali government has recently said the AU force needs to be bolstered, and called for UN troops. Many more deaths are likely before that becomes a reality.