A military helicopter from the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia crashed at the airport in the capital Mogadishu on Tuesday and was engulfed in flames, the state-run SONNA news outlet reported.<\/p>\n
The helicopter from the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) was carrying eight personnel when it crashed during landing, SONNA said on its X account, adding that the fire had been contained.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties. An AUSSOM spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment.<\/p>\n
“We heard the blast and saw smoke and flames over a helicopter,” Farah Abdulle, who works at the airport, told Reuters. “The smoke entirely covered the helicopter.”<\/p>\n
AUSSOM has more than 11,000 personnel in Somalia to help the country’s military counter Islamist group al Shabaab.<\/p>\n
The al Qaeda affiliate has been fighting for nearly two decades to topple Somalia’s internationally-recognised government and establish its own rule based on a strict interpretation of sharia law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A military helicopter from the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia crashed at the airport in the capital Mogadishu on Tuesday and was engulfed in flames, the state-run SONNA news outlet reported. The helicopter from the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) was carrying eight personnel when it crashed during landing, SONNA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16822,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1116,29,1129],"tags":[49,2049,189],"class_list":["post-16821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-african-union","category-east-africa","category-security","tag-african-union","tag-mogadishu","tag-somalia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}