AFP, MOGADISHU: Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militants stormed an African Union base Friday in the country’s southwest, the Somali army said, with witnesses reporting several dead. “They launched an offensive on a military base at El-Adde and there was heavy fighting which caused casualties,” Somali army colonel Idris Ahmed said, adding a Shebab suicide commando blasted a way into the base in the Gedo region, which borders Kenya and Ethiopia. Both Somali troops and Kenyan soldiers with the AU force, AMISOM, are deployed at that base. “There was suicide attack followed by the fighting and it seems that the base was stormed,” Ahmed said. “AMISOM can confirm that there was an attack on our troops in El-Adde,” the force said in a brief statement, but gave no further details. Shebab spokesman Shebab spokesman Abdiaziz Abu Musab claimed to have killed 63 Kenyan troops in the pre-dawn attack, but this could not be immediately verified.