Fifty-four Ugandan peacekeepers died when militants besieged an African Union (AU) base in Somalia last week, Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, said, in one of the worst recent attacks by al-Shabaab jihadists in the war-torn country.
“We discovered the lifeless bodies of 54 fallen soldiers, including a commander,” Museveni said in a Twitter post late on Saturday.
The toll is one of the heaviest yet since pro-government forces backed by the AU force known as ATMIS launched an offensive against al-Shabaab last August. It was also a rare admission of a major military death toll by AU members.
Al-Shabaab, which has been waging a deadly insurgency against Somalia’s fragile central government for more than a decade, claimed responsibility for the attack on May 26, saying it had overrun the base and killed 137 soldiers.
The attack highlights the endemic security problems in the Horn of Africa country as it struggles to emerge from decades of conflict and natural disasters.
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