Move FM Global News

KISMAYU, Somalia – A Somali military base was attacked by Al Shabaab militant, who launched a suicide car bombing at the base in Baar Sanguni and then attacked troops.

The Islamist militant group, Al Shabaab claimed the attack on Monday and said that they had killed 27 soldiers. 

The group said that its fighters attacked the Baar Sanguni military base in southern Somalia with a suicide car bomb.

The militants then stormed the base and opened gunfire before seizing the base.

Abdiasis Abu Musab, Al Shabaab’s spokesperson for military operations said, “We first attacked the base with a suicide car bomb and then stormed. We killed 27 soldiers and took the base. Some soldiers fled into the jungles.”

Meanwhile, local reports stated that residents in the Jamame town, which is 70 kilometres away from the port city of Kismayu heard the blast and even the gunfire.

Further, after being alerted about an explosion and heavy fighting in the region by rebels, the military was sending reinforcements to the base.

A Somali military officer, Majo Mohamud Aden was quoted as saying, “We have sent reinforcement to the base. We understand there was an explosion and heavy fighting between Al Shabaab, who attacked the base, and the Somali forces. We have no details so far.”

Later in the day, Government spokesman Aden Isaq Ali said that the militants had seized the base, but that after the military sent reinforcements, soldiers retook the base after heavy fighting. 

He added that six soldiers and 87 militants were killed and said that troops were pursuing the militants, and had taken control of a key bridge.

Assistant information minister Aden Isak Ali said in a statement to the state news agency SONNA that fighting which between Al Shabaab and the national army resulted in the army killing 87 militants.

The attack on Monday became the militant group’s second strike on the base in as many months.

Last month, the group carried out an assault in the same area that left seven soldiers injured, but at the time the group said that its fighters had killed a U.S. soldier, two Kenyans and nine Somali troops.

In a decade-long insurgency, the Al Qaeda-linked militant group has battled to topple the central government and impose its rule, based on its own strict interpretation of Islam’s sharia law.

Al Shabaab, ranked as the deadliest Islamist extremist group in Africa in 2016, has killed hundreds of civilians across East Africa and thousands of Somalis.