{"id":25964,"date":"2016-06-10T01:25:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T01:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/ethiopia-base-in-somalia-attacked-by-al-shabab\/"},"modified":"2016-06-10T01:25:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T01:25:47","slug":"ethiopia-base-in-somalia-attacked-by-al-shabab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/ethiopia-base-in-somalia-attacked-by-al-shabab\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia base in Somalia attacked by al-Shabab"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabab says it has killed 60 Ethiopian soldiers in an attack on an African Union base in central Somalia.}<\/p>\n<p>The AU mission (Amisom) says it repulsed the attack, killing 110 militants.<\/p>\n<p>Residents in Halgan told the BBC they had heard a huge bang followed by a heavy exchange of gunfire.<\/p>\n<p>Amisom supports the government as it fights to regain control of the country from al-Shabab.<\/p>\n<p>In a series of tweets it has said its soldiers, alongside troops from the Somali army, &#8220;drove back the attackers who are now on the run with the joint forces in pursuit&#8221;.<br \/>\nEthiopia has denied that any of its soldiers were killed.<\/p>\n<p>It is not possible to verify the various claims about how many people were killed.<\/p>\n<p>Somali Security Minister Abdirizak Mohamed Ahmed told state-owned Radio Muqdisho that officials had counted the bodies of 240 militants outside the base.<\/p>\n<p>He said that nine Amisom soldiers had lost their lives.<\/p>\n<p>He said that the attackers had driven a car bomb into the base.<\/p>\n<p>Ethiopia is one of five countries contributing troops to the 22,000-strong mission and this is the first time an Ethiopian-run Amisom base has been attacked.<\/p>\n<p>Halgan, 260km (161 miles) north of the capital, Mogadishu, is part of the area of Somalia patrolled by Ethiopian soldiers.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-12711 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_89924189_89924188.jpg\" alt=\"Al-Shabab fightersImage copyrightAP Image caption This is the first time al-Shabab has attacked an Ethiopian-run base in Somalia\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabab says it has killed 60 Ethiopian soldiers in an attack on an African Union base in central Somalia.} The AU mission (Amisom) says it repulsed the attack, killing 110 militants. Residents in Halgan told the BBC they had heard a huge bang followed by a heavy exchange of gunfire. Amisom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25964"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25964"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}