Rail transport in Somalia Somalia-Ethiopia border. Somali troops from the First and Second Somali divisions of the Italian colonial army helped during the construction. Rail transport in Somalia Railway transport in Somalia consisted of the erstwhile Mogadishu–Villabruzzi Railway and secondary tracks. The system was built during the 1910s by the authorities in Italian Somaliland. Its track gauge was , a gauge favoured by the Italians in their colonies in the Horn of Africa and North Africa. The railway was dismantled in the 1940s by the British during their military occupation of Italian Somaliland, and was subsequently never rehabilitated. The 114 km of the Mogadishu-Villabruzzi
2010 timeline of the War in Somalia recaptured the city. Initial reports indicate that 11 al-Shabaab fighters and 1 government soldier died in the battle. Continued fighting has also been reported in the city of Beledweyne. On October 21, the African Union appealed to the United Nations for an air and naval blockade of Somalia. The AU Commissioner for Peace and Security Ramtane Lamamra insisted that such an action was necessary to curb the flow of weapons to al-Shabaab and other Islamist militants in the region, and also called for a total of 20,000 AU peacekeepers to be deployed to Somalia, up from the current deployment of