Al-Shabaab attacks Kenyan military base in Somalia

The main AMISOM bases have been put on high alert as the group intensified attacks in Somalia.

News Keydmedia Online
14 June 2021

HOSINGOW, Somalia - Al-Shabaab fighters have launched an assault on a Kenyan military base in southern Somalia, the latest in a string of terrorist attacks in the Horn of Africa nation.

According to the sources, the al-Qaeda-linked group has fired mortar shells towards the camp before engaging in a fierce gunfight with the Kenyan defense forces [KDF] using machine guns and light weapons, including AK-47 rifles. 

An official with AU mission has confirmed to Keydmedia English Service that the dawn attack was repelled and denied Al-Shabaab claims that the base was overrun and scores of KDF soldiers were killed or wounded.

The insurgents attacked the outpost from different directions that sparked heavy fighting in Hosingow, a small strategic town under the Jubaland state of Somalia which has been protected by Kenyan forces of AMISOM contingent for almost 10 years.

KDF suffered the biggest loss on January 15, 2016, after Al-Shabaab carried out a complex attack on a Kenyan base in the town of Al-Adde located in the Gedo region, a conflict-hit zone in the southwest of Somalia.

In the El-Adde raid, the militant group said it had killed more than 100 soldiers and captured dozens alive, but the Kenyan government refused to give its casualty figures.

KEYDMEDIA English