Al Shabaab militants on Friday launched an attack on the El-Adde base of the African Union peacekeepers in Gedo region in southern Somalia, killing dozens of soldiers, said officials and residents.
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Jones also appeared in at least two al Shabaab videos, including one with fighters who participated in a June 14, 2015, attack on a Kenyan Defense Force base in Lamu County, Kenya, in which two Kenyan soldiers were killed, prosecutors said.
Dozens of Kenyan and Somali troops are feared dead after suspected Al-Shabaab militants overran a military camp during an ongoing gun-and-bomb attack in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, Kenyan military said Friday.
Somali and Kenyan military officials said the fighters had seized the Somali army base near the town of Ceel Cadde, about 550 km (340 miles) west of Mogadishu in a region near Kenya’s border.
While Obonyo stressed that the number of casualties on both sides is yet to be verified, al Shabab claims to have killed 63 Kenyan soldiers inside the base.
“We don’t know about the casualties, but people who went there saw many dead bodies strewn around”, he said, having spoken to those who went to the base.
That statement said the casualty toll is unknown.
The base had Kenyan soldiers serving as part of an African Union force battling the Islamist group in Somalia, a country mired in conflict since civil war broke out in 1991.
Kenya has provided a major contingent to the AU force that is fighting al-Shabab, a Somali Islamic extremist group linked with al-Qaida, and assisting the elected government of Somalia. The African Union confirmed an attack on its troops.
But the 22,000-strong AMISOM force has also made significant gains against the al-Shabaab, pushing them out of several strongholds in the southwest of the country.
Al-Shabaab has in the past carried out numerous attacks on African Union bases in Somalia.
“The troops are fighting the terrorists to push them back”, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Njuguna, spokesman for the AU mission in Somalia, told Al Jazeera.
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“WE HAVE CAPTURED THE TOWN” Al Shabaab said it was in control of Ceel Cado and had captured almost 30 lorries, tanks and armoured vehicles.
