4 Ukrainian citizens were among those captured when a helicopter went down in Somalia this week
Nairobi, Kenya — Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry says four of its citizens were among those captured by al-Qaeda-linked extremists in Somalia after their United Nations-contracted helicopter crash-landed in territory controlled by the militants earlier this week .
Officials said the helicopter crashed on Wednesday due to an engine failure and was then attacked by Al-Shabaab militants, who killed one person and kidnapped the other passengers.
“Our citizens were members of the helicopter crew of the UN mission in Somalia that crashed,” Oleh Nikolenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said in a Facebook post on Friday.
The helicopter is owned by a Ukrainian private company, which carried out a transport contract on behalf of the United Nations, he said.
In addition to the Ukrainians, there were also five foreigners on board, Nikolenko said, without revealing their nationalities.
An aviation official said earlier this week that medical professionals and soldiers were on board the helicopter headed to the town of Wisil for a medical evacuation when it was forced to land in a village in Galmadug on Wednesday.
The minister of internal security of central Somalia’s Galmudug state, Mohamed Abdi Aden Gaboobe, told The Associated Press by phone on Thursday that the helicopter landed due to an engine failure in the village of Xindheere.
He said there were six foreigners and one Somali on board and one was shot dead as he tried to escape. One was missing. Different sources give different figures about the number of occupants in the helicopter, varying between seven and nine. The AP has not been able to verify the exact number of people on board the helicopter.
The extremists then burned the helicopter after seizing what they considered important, the Galmudug minister said.
Al-Shabab, the East African branch of al-Qaeda, has been blamed for the attack, but the group has not claimed responsibility.
In addition, the United Nations in Somalia strongly condemned a mortar attack for which al-Shabab has claimed responsibility, which killed a member of the UN Guard Unit on Thursday.
A number of mortar shells landed in the area of Aden Adde International Airport, where the UN compound is located, on Thursday evening, according to a statement from the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM). In addition to killing a member of the UN Guard unit, the mortar shells are bombarding damaged infrastructure, the statement said.
Al-Shabab has stepped up attacks on Somali military bases in recent months after losing control of some rural areas in a military offensive that followed Somalia’s president’s call for “all-out war” against the fighters.
Al-Shabab still controls parts of southern and central Somalia and continues to carry out attacks in the capital Mogadishu and other areas while extorting millions of dollars annually from residents and businesses in its quest to impose an Islamic state .
Widespread insecurity means the UN and other humanitarian organizations are traveling through Somalia by plane. The UN Mission in the Horn of Africa is providing humanitarian assistance in a country periodically hit by deadly droughts and which has one of the least developed healthcare systems in the world.
The UN mission is also supporting a 19,000-strong multinational African Union peacekeeping force, which has begun a phased withdrawal from the country with the aim of transferring security responsibilities in the coming months to Somali forces, which some experts have described as not ready for this battle. the challenge.
Last month, the Somali government welcomed the UN Security Council’s decision to lift the arms embargo imposed on the country more than three decades ago, saying it would help modernize Somalia’s armed forces.
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Omar Faruk contributed to this report from Mogadishu, Somalia.