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- Al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia took control of a military base.
- They had lost it to government forces in January.
- Casualty figures were not immediately available.
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 in 2022.
But the group has repeatedly shown its ability to strike back with major attacks.
The base in Janay Abdale, about 60km 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.
READ | Eight dead in Somalia bombing claimed by al-Shabaab - police
Casualty figures were not immediately available.
Al-Shabaab confirmed it was behind the attack.
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.
