{Somalia’s militant Islamist group al-Shabab says it has carried out a major assault on a military base in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland.}<\/p>\n
Its fighters killed 61 government troops and seized 16 vehicles in the dawn raid, the group said.<\/p>\n
A Puntland government minister has denied the high death toll, but did not give separate casualty figures.<\/p>\n
The al-Qaeda-linked group has carried out several big attacks on military bases in Somalia.<\/p>\n
In January, it said it had killed 50 Kenyan soldiers in an assault on their base in Kolbiyow town in the south of the country.<\/p>\n
Kenyan troops are part of an 18,000-strong African Union (AU) force helping the UN-backed government tackle al-Shabab in Somalia.<\/p>\n
In the the latest attack, the militants withdrew after more than three hours of fighting with government forces, residents told the BBC.<\/p>\n
The attack took place on the base near the remote Galgala Mountains, about 70km (43 miles) from the port city of Bosaso.<\/p>\n
Confirming the attack, Puntland Security Minister Abdiaziz Hirsi said that an investigation was under way and details would be given later.<\/p>\n
The Galgala Mountains are a stronghold of al-Shabab, but a faction of militants broke away in 2015 to affiliate themselves with the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
Source:BBC <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Somalia’s militant Islamist group al-Shabab says it has carried out a major assault on a military base in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland.} Its fighters killed 61 government troops and seized 16 vehicles in the dawn raid, the group said. A Puntland government minister has denied the high death toll, but did not give separate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"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-35044","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\/35044","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35044"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=35044"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=35044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}