Dozens dead attack on Somali army base, by Al Shabaab militants

Somali and Kenyan military officials said the fighters had seized the Somali army base near the town of Ceel Cadde, about 550 km (340 miles) west of Mogadishu in a region near Kenya's border. A spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM said the battle for the base was still under way. Al Shabaab said it had killed more than 60 Kenyan soldiers from AMISOM. Kenya's Defence Ministry said both sides had suffered casualties but said numbers were not confirmed. An AMISOM spokesman said the al Shabaab toll was exaggerated but did not give a figure. There was no independent figure. A shopkeeper in the Ceel Cadde town said soldiers from AMISOM appeared to have left the town and fighters were now on the streets. Al Shabaab has been driven out of major strongholds in Somalia by an offensive by AMISOM and the Somali army that was launched last year. But the fighters still control some parts of the countryside and often launch guerrilla-style assaults and bomb attacks We see al Shabaab in every corner of town," shopkeeper Abdullahi Iidle told Reuters. "Some residents have fled." African Union troops, now numbering about 22,000 from several African nations, have spent nearly a decade battling al Shabaab insurgents in Somalia, a country mired in conflict since civil war broke out in 1991. Al Shabaab has in the past year staged multiple attacks against African Union bases in Somalia, part of a guerrilla warfare strategy to drive out foreign troops and impose its harsh version of Islamic law across the Horn of Africa nation.

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