EU Advisors in Somalia Increase Their Security

Following the attack on the Westgate Mall in Kenya, the EU has raised the security level for their Somalia team.

The European Union has increased security precautions for its military advisers in Somalia after the deadly attack by Somali Islamists on a Kenyan shopping mall, it said on Thursday.

The EU has 120 military experts, split between the Somali capital Mogadishu and Uganda, training and advising Somali security forces battling the al Shabaab group which claimed responsibility for the Nairobi attack.

The EU's top military officer, French General Patrick de Rousiers, said it was routine to raise the alert level. "Of course we do this. Everybody does this, every embassy does this. Everyone is concerned," he told a news conference.

The EU has had no word of any planned attack on its team and no EU member state had asked to pull its staff out of Somalia, de Rousiers said, but he noted that al Shabaab struck the main U.N. compound in Mogadishu in June when 22 people were killed.

By: Brant