Al-Shabaab said it attacked an African Union military base in Somalia on Thursday in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike that killed their leader near Barawe in September.
“Al-Shabaab has carried out the AU military base attack to revenge the killing of our leader, Ahmed Godane,” the group’s spokesman Ali Dheere said on Andalus radio,a pro-Al-Shabaab broadcaster, Friday.
Seven Al-Shabaab militants are dead after they attacked Somalia’s largest base for African Union troops, according to the African Union Mission in Somalia.
Two militants in a car detonated themselves inside the Halane Military base in Mogadishu, AMISOM spokesman Ali Aden Houmed said.
Three AU soldiers from Uganda and a civilian died in the attack, AMISOM said on its website. Seven Al-Shabab soldiers were killed, AU said.
The heavily fortified base also houses several U.N. and international agencies.
“I condemn this reprehensible attack on the AMISOM base camp in Mogadishu which also hosts the UN Headquarters for Somalia,” U.N. Special Envoy for Somalia Nicholas Kay said.
He praised the quick response of AU forces to the attack.
Maman S. Sidikou, special representative of the AU Commission chairperson (SRCC) for Somalia and head of AMISOM, offered his condolences to the families of the victims and “applauded the quick response and bravery of the … troops in quelling this reprehensible attack,” according to AMISOM.
Al-Shabaab has been waging war in Somalia in an effort to implement a stricter form of Islamic law, or sharia.
Established in 2007, the U.N.-backed AMISOM currently has some 20,000 African Union troops deployed in the impoverished nation to “conduct peace support operations” and to “stabilize the situation.”
