Three Dead as Somali Insurgents Attack AU Base

Three Somali civilians were killed Wednesday morning as Islamist insurgents attacked an African Union peacekeeping base in the capital, Mogadishu. Eyewitnesses say the three were killed when a mortar shell slammed into a home adjoining the peacekeeping base. None of the AU troops was hurt. Meanwhile, regional leaders are meeting in Ethiopia to find ways to bolster Somalia’s weakened interim government, which has lost much territory to the insurgents – including President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s hometown of Jowhar.[PE]