Uganda President Yoweri Museveni said on Saturday that 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed in an attack by the militant group al-Shabaab on a military base in Somalia.
Museveni said the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) had since recaptured the base from the Islamist group.
“Our soldiers demonstrated remarkable resilience and reorganized themselves, resulting in the recapture of the base by Tuesday,” the president said.
Al-Shabaab fighters had targeted the base early last Friday, May 26 in Bulamarer, 130 kilometers southwest of the capital Mogadishu.
Museveni said last week that there had been Ugandan casualties but had not given further details about the attack on the troops, who are serving in the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS).
Al-Shabaab, which has said it carried out suicide bomb attacks and killed 137 soldiers at the base, has been fighting since 2006 to replace Somalia’s Western-backed government with its own rule based on a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Regional countries have sent troops to Somalia to fight the terror group.
Last August, an intensive government offensive began after the election victory of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and has made significant gains in eroding the group’s control of vast swathes of Somali land.
But al-Shabaab is still capable of launching significant attacks on government, commercial, and military targets.
It also intermittently launches attacks in neighboring Kenya as part of reprisals for Nairobi sending troops to support Mogadishu’s rebel pushback.
ATMIS, which has 22,000 troops, has been assisting Somalia’s federal government in its war against al-Shabab since 2022 when it replaced the AU Mission in Somalia.
