Uganda says 54 peacekeepers killed in Somalia attack

KAMPALA: Some 54 Ugandan peacekeepers died when militants besieged an African Union base in Somalia last week, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said, in one of the worst recent attacks by Al-Shabaab jihadists. “We discovered the lifeless bodies of 54 fallen soldiers, including a commander,” Museveni said in a post on his official Twitter account late on Saturday. 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. The militants drove a car laden with explosives into the base in Bulo Marer, 120-km southwest of the capital Mogadishu, leading to a gunfight, local residents and a Somali military commander told AFP. The toll is one of the heaviest yet since pro-government forces backed by the AU force known as ATMIS launched an offensive last August against Al-Shabaab. It was also a rare admission of a major death toll among the military.