Mogadishu - An African Union peacekeeper died and two others were injured Monday after a roadside bomb exploded in South Mogadishu, a spokesman for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said.

"An AMISOM convoy of Ugandan soldiers come under attack - one of our soldiers died and two were wounded," Major Barieye Bahuko told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

However, local resident Ahmed Mohamed told dpa that he saw the bodies of five peacekeepers on the ground.

The incident came a day after another Ugandan peacekeeper was killed in an attack by suspected Islamist insurgents.

A total of eight AU peacekeepers have been killed since the mission began in March 2007.

There are around 1,800 AU troops in Somalia, all from Uganda and Burundi.

Some 8,000 troops are supposed to be policing the conflict-ridden nation, but other African states have yet to fulfill their pledges.

A brutal insurgency has gripped Somalia since Ethiopian troops invaded neighbouring Somalia in 2006 to kick out the Islamist regime and put the transitional federal government back in power.

UN agencies say over 6,000 civilians have died in the insurgency and hundreds of thousands of Somalis who fled fighting in the capital Mogadishu are now living in camps.

Somalia has been plagued by chaos and clan-based civil war since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991. (dpa)