Mogadishu attack shows need for peacekeepers

A mortar attack on Somalia's presidential palace has shown the need for peacekeepers to move quickly into the Horn of Africa nation, the African Union (AU) said after endorsing the mission.

The AU's peace and security council approved a 7,650-strong force for Somalia late on Friday, just minutes before attackers struck Mogadishu's hilltop Villa Somalia with five mortars.

President Abdullahi Yusuf, who moved there after the recent ouster of Islamists who had controlled most of south Somalia for six months, was inside but unhurt, government sources said.

A late-night gunfight ensued outside the palace between the guards and assailants, who melted back into the streets. Many doubt the AU's capacity to muster such a force, let alone tame Somalia. The country has been in chaos since the 1991 ouster of a dictator and defied US and UN peacekeepers in the early 1990s.

Only Uganda has publicly vowed to supply troops but Djinnit said a second, unnamed country had also pledged to contribute, meaning the first three of nine planned 850-soldier AU battalions could go in "within weeks".

The AU, whose peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region have failed to halt the conflict there, wants the United Nations to take over after six months. But it is not at all clear whether the world body's members want to take on such a mission.