Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said some of his country’s soldiers died in Friday’s raid by Islamist militants on an African Union military camp in Somalia.
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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 number of casualties on both sides is not known.
The group has increasingly targeted Kenya, which intervened in Somalia in 2011 in support of the government and the African Union peacekeeping mission.
Radio Andulus, a pro-militant, Internet-based radio station in the Somali capital of Mogadishu reported the attack on the base, near the town of El-Adde.
Al Shabaab had claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had taken over the base and killed more than 63 Kenya Defence Forces soldiers.
“We have now counted and gathered in the base 61 dead bodies of (Kenyan) soldiers”, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military operations spokesman, told Reuters. Despite being pushed out of Somalia’s major cities and towns, al-Shabab, which has ties with al-Qaeda, continues to launch deadly guerrilla attacks across the country.
However, al-Shabaab says it is now in command after sending in a suicide bomber to ram the gates of the compound.
MOGADISHU Fighters from Somalia militant group al Shabaab attacked an African Union base in southern Somalia early on Friday, militants and a Somali army officer said, and fighting was going on inside.
An El Adde resident told the BBC by phone that he had heard a loud explosion at about 0530 local time (02:30 GMT), followed by heavy gunfire.
“For al-Shabaab the control of strategic assets has ceased to be an option since Kenyan forces joined the Amisom effort”, he said.
In September 2015, Shabaab fighters stormed a Ugandan AMISOM base in Janale district, 80km southwest of Mogadishu in the Lower Shabelle region.
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The group was blamed for an attack on Garissa University in April a year ago, which killed 148 students.
