Somalia's al Qaeda-affiliated Shebab militants have managed to briefly seize control of an African Union (AU) base on Tuesday, following a suicide car bomb attack that heralded the insurgents' aggressive siege on the military compound. Witnesses of the attack report scores dead and the base taken over by the rebels, though the A.U. continues to insist that it has fully fended off the rebels' attack, according to The Express Tribune.
"The base is still under AMISOM control, reports that the base has been taken over and our weapons captured are false. Although our troops undertook a tactical withdrawal following the initial vehicle-borne explosive attack, they have since consolidated and regained full control of the base," a statement from the A.U. force in Somalia stated after the attack.
Eye-witnesses, however, describe a different scenario, stating that the Shebab rebels have begun looting the weapons cache in the camp, adding that more than 20 were killed in the siege. Shebab soldiers, on the other hand, state that the number of slain soldiers were 50, reports Yahoo! News.
AMISOM is yet to release any casualty figures, though it admitted that there were some soldiers who died in the attack.
Abdulaziz Abu Musab, Shebab spokesman, has stated that the base was stormed as a retaliation for a previous attack by Ugandan troops. "This attack was aimed to retaliate against the killing of innocent civilians in Merka by the Ugandan troops," he said.
U.N. troops have become the casualties of recent attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, as covered by this HNGN article.
