MOGADISHU — A mortar shell smashed into an African Union peacekeeping mission base in Mogadishu Monday, killing several people, including a soldier, officials on the base said.

An 82-mm mortar round struck a secondary entrance to the AMISOM’s main Mogadishu base, ripping through an area where dozens of Somali civilians queue up every day to receive treatment from the mission’s doctors, an official said on condition of anonymity.

According to an official with AMISOM’s Ugandan contingent, one Ugandan soldier was killed in the attack.

The force’s spokesman, Ba-Hoku Barigye, confirmed the incident but could not give an accurate death toll.

“An explosion took place at one of the base’s entrances, it appears several Somalis were killed,” he said.

The hardline Islamist insurgent group Shebab — an organisation whose leader recently proclaimed allegiance to Al-Qaeda supremo Osama bin Laden — and their allies from the more political Hezb al-Islam movement routinely fire mortar shells on the base.

They launched a fierce military offensive in May 2009 aimed at toppling internationally-backed President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, whose embattled administration has owed its survival largely to the protection of AMISOM’s 5,300 peacekeepers.

The Shebab accuse AMISOM’s Ugandan and Burundian soldiers of occupying their country and being engaged in a Christian crusade against Muslim Somalia.

Earlier Monday, the AU mission’s top civilian official and the UN special envoy Somalia visited the base and reiterated their full support to Sharif’s transitional federal government.

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