Addis Ababa,Sunatimes- At the end of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) summit in Addis Ababa the regional body decided on Monday to urgently deploy 2,000 peacekeeping forces to Somalia to join the Ugandan and Burundian forces there.

Leaders from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia held a day’s closed-door summit in Addis Ababa where they discussed the current security situation in Somalia.

Accordingly, the summit decided to immediately deploy 2,000 additional peacekeeping forces in order to help Somalia resist the ever strengthened attack by Islamist insurgents.

The decision was made while Somali President Sheikh Sharif earlier launched an appeal for more international support to rescue his government, which is facing a serious attack since the past few weeks by insurgents and Islamist militants.

The deployment of additional 2,000 peacekeeping forces, if done soon, will bring the total number of peacekeepers in Somalia to around 8, 000, which the African Union initially decided to deploy in 2007 under the African Union Mission In Somalia (AMISOM).

"IGAD regrets that the approval level of AMISOM troops has not been achieved thus far, and decides to despatch 2,000 troops to be deployed throughout the country. In this regard, the summit embraces the need to mobilize Somali forces internally with possible intervention by neighbouring countries including the East African Communality (EAC) and empower with resources and equipment," said the IGAD communiqué issued at the end of the summit.

The summit also ordered the chiefs of defence staff of IGAD member states to convene an urgent meeting and submit to the African Union Commission and action plan to deploy 2,000 peacekeepers to Somalia to enable AMIOSM to reach the authorization strengthen of 8,100 troops.

It is not yet clear, which countries are sending these 2,000 troops to Somalia.

The summit also called upon the AU to relocate as soon as possible the civilian and police components of AMISOM to Mogadishu.

As in the previous summit, the IGAD leaders also called on the UN to take over the AMISOM