Al-Shabab seizes African Union base in Somalia

“Al-Shabab militia attacked… the KDF troops under AMISOM counter-attacked, the fighting is still going on”, said Kenya army spokesman David Obonyo.

Somali army colonel Idris Ahmed said a Shebab suicide commando blasted into the El-Adde base in the Gedo region, which borders Kenya and Ethiopia, in a pre-dawn attack.

“The fighting was still ongoing by the time of this release and the number of casualties on both sides is unknown”, read the statement. But the fighters still control some parts of the countryside and often launch guerrilla-style assaults and bomb attacks. It was a base for Kenyan military forces, there were a few Somali soldiers with Kenyans and escaped.

Al-Shabaab militants have attacked an army base of Africa Union peacekeepers in southern Somalia.

However, al-Shabaab says it is now in command after sending in a suicide bomber to ram the gates of the compound.

Heavily armed militants from the Al-Shabaab extremist Islamist group launched an attack on a military base run by Kenyan troops, a contributing military force of the African Union, the Associated Press reports.

An unidentified al-Shabaab commander made the claim on Radio Andulus, a pro-al-Shabaab station that broadcasts via the Internet in the capital, Mogadishu.

“We have counted 63 dead bodies inside the base”, Musab added.

AMISOM said in a statement its troops turned the attack back but some of its forces had been killed and others wounded.

Residents in Ceel Cedo wrote on social media platforms Friday that they could hear sporadic gunfire in the area.

In April 2015, the militant group staged an attack on a university in Garissa, killing 148 people.

Al Shabab, a fundamentalist group that wants to impose Shariah law in the country, has waged a decade-long insurgency against the Somali government.

The African Union Mission in Somalia has deployed about 22,000 peacekeepers to help Somali government forces stabilise the country, which hasn’t had a functioning central administration since civil war erupted a quarter of a century ago.