- 15 January 2016
- Africa
AFPBBC reports that the Al Shabab Islamist group says it has taken "complete control" of the AU camp and killed more than 60 Kenyan soldiers.Al-Shabab militants have overrun an African Union military base outside the southern Somali town of el-Ade.
Residents told the BBC that al-Shabab had raised its flag at a camp for Kenyan troops and said insurgents had paraded bodies through the town.
But Kenya's army spokesman said it was a nearby Somali base that was stormed and Kenyan troops counter-attacked.
The number of casualties on both sides was not known, Kenyan military spokesman Col David Obonyo said in a statement.
He told the BBC that reports of high Kenyan casualties were "normal propaganda from al-Shabab".
Kenya contributes more than 4,000 troops to the 22,000-strong AU force that is in Somalia helping the UN-backed government battle al-Shabab, which is part of al-Qaeda.
An el-Ade resident told the BBC by phone that he had heard a loud explosion at about 05:30 local time (02:30 GMT), followed by heavy gunfire.
"We then saw an al-Shabab fighter in the town. We also saw Kenyan soldiers who were fleeing from the camp.
"At the moment the camp is in the hands of al-Shabab. We can see military cars burning and dead soldiers all over the place. There are no civilian casualties but most people have fled the town."
Al-Shabab is keen to stress - both to the foreign forces in Somalia and would-be defectors within its ranks enamoured by so-called Islamic State - that it is a force to be reckoned with.
It is true that the group exaggerates the scale of its attacks but whether or not the death toll from el-Ade attack is as high as claimed, the African Union mission (Amisom) will have to recognise it still has a long way to go to gain full control of the country.
It says a lot for the insurgents to be daring enough to strike at the heart of an African Union base and engage troops in hours of combat.
They have done this before - in two major attacks targeting the Somali military last year, dozens of Burundian troops and Ugandans soldiers were killed.
Despite these setbacks, Amisom has achieved a lot recently by managing to push al-Shabab out of many parts of southern Somalia.
An al-Shabab official told the BBC that its fighters had attacked the base after morning prayers, starting with a car bomb before storming the facility.
"We took control of the base after one hour of fierce fighting," he said.
"We counted 63 Kenyan bodies inside the base. The other Kenyan troops have run away into the bush and we are hunting them down."
He said the militants were confiscating 28 of 31 military vehicles inside the camp and all arms and ammunition.
The two military bases - one for Somali troops and the other for AU soldiers - neighbour each other on the outskirts of el-Ade, which is in Gedo region, about 380km (240 miles) west of Mogadishu.
Al-Shabab was ousted from the capital, Mogadishu, in August 2011, but still has a presence in large areas of southern Somalia and often stages attacks across the country.
It seems there is a wave of coordinated attacks parts of Africa. Earlier, USA Today reports that Gunfire and explosions are reported in the capital of the landlocked, West African country of Burkina Faso only days after a newly elected president took office following an abortive coup in September by presidential guards against an interim government, according to news media reports.
The BBC quotes witnesses as saying two car bombs exploded outside the Hotel Splendid , which was then stormed by masked men. The four-story hotel in the central Ouagadougou, the capital, is frequented by the westerners and staff of theUnited Nations .
Gunfire and explosions are also reported by Reuters and the AFP news agency , which said a car had been set afire at the Splendid, a four-star hotel located near the airport. An Associated Press reporter near the scene said several cars were also ablaze at the site..
In addition, one witness reports that a nearby cafe-retaurant,The Cappuccino was also targeted, according to the French news agency. Another unconfirmed report on social media said six bearded men wearing turbans and masks went into the hotel.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, though jihadists have attacked hotels before in neighboring Mali, including a devastating attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in November that left 20 people dead. While Burkina Faso has largely been spared the violence wracked by Islamic extremist groups in Mali, a Romanian national was abducted last April
The U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou said on Twitter that it is "closely following the situation downtown."
The reported unrest follows growing tension in the wake of a coup that collapsed September after only a week. The newly installed government recently issued an arrest warrant for Guillaume Soro , the head of the National Assembly in neighboring Ivory Coast , for his alleged involvement in the failed coup attempt, which was led by presidential guards.
The warrant was issued through Interpol and the foreign ministry, according to prosecutor Col. Sita Sangare, the Associated Press reports. It was not immediately clear if the latest unrest was directly related to the previous coup efforts.
Soro allegedly offered to give support to coup leaders in phone calls to Burkina Faso's former foreign affairs minister Djibril Bassole , Sangare said, adding that the calls will be used as part of the prosecution. The calls, however, have not yet been authenticated.
Bassole was arrested and jailed at the end of September on accusations that he helped support coup leader Col. Gilbert Diendere, who is also now jailed. Bassole has denied the allegations. Diendere has been charged with crimes against humanity for the deaths of 15 people and the wounding of about 250 others around the coup attempt.
Bassole was a high-ranking minister under former Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore, who is now in exile in Ivory Coast after being ousted in a popular uprising in October 2014.
