MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Fighters from Somalia’s al Shabaab Islamist group on Tuesday recaptured a military base in the south that they had lost to the army in January, a Somali officer and a local resident said.
Al Shabaab, an affiliate of al Qaeda, has come under intense pressure from the military and allied clan-based militias, who launched a major offensive last year. But the group has repeatedly shown its ability to strike back with major attacks.
The base in Janay Abdale, about 60 km (37 miles) to the west of the port city of Kismayu, came under attack early in the morning from a car bomb and gunfire, Major Abdullahi Hussein told Reuters from Kismayu.
Halima Osman said her husband, who survived the attack and managed to get out of the base, had called her with a colleague’s phone.
“He told me they ran into the bush after the bombing and fierce fighting killed many of his friends and the military vehicles were burnt,” she told Reuters.
Casualty figures were not immediately available.
Al Shabaab confirmed it was behind the attack. “We control the base. We took all their weapons,” it said in a statement.
Forces from the Jubbaland regional government had wrested control of Janay Abdale from al Shabaab in January as part of the offensive which first began in the centre of Somalia before spreading south.
(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Aaron Ross and Christina Fincher)
