NAIROBI (AFP) – Internationally funded African Union (AU) troops in war-torn and impoverished Somalia have raped women and traded food aid for sex, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a damning report on Monday.

“Some of the women who were raped said that the soldiers gave them food or money afterwards in an apparent attempt to frame the assault as transactional sex,” the HRW report said.

There was no immediate reaction from the AU force, AMISOM, a 22,000-strong force with soldiers from six nations, which has been fighting alongside government troops against the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents since 2007. AMISOM donors include the UN, European Union, Britain and United States.

The vulnerable women largely came from basic camps in the capital Mogadishu, after fleeing rural Somalia during a devastating famine in 2011.