• 

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni reported, on Saturday, that 54 African Union mission troops were killed in an assault last week, May 26, by the terrorist group al Shabaab on a military base in Somalia.

Museveni added the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) had recaptured the base from the terrorist group.

“Our soldiers demonstrated remarkable resilience and reorganized themselves, resulting in the recapture of the base by Tuesday,” the President said.

Al Shabaab terrorists attacked the base in Bulamarer, 130 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu.

Museveni stated last week that there had been Ugandan casualties but provided no additional specifics concerning the attack on the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS).

Following President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's election victory last August, the government launched a crackdown on the terrorist group, achieving substantial achievements in eroding the group's authority over wide swaths of Somali country.

It is worth noting that ATMIS has been aiding Somalia's federal government in its fight against al Shabaab since 2022 when it superseded the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

For years, Somalia has been witnessing a bloody conflict between government forces and the militants of the al Shabaab movement, which seeks to control the country in the Horn of Africa and rule it.

Al-Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab was driven out of Mogadishu a decade ago but eventually seized control of large areas of the countryside and continued to conduct deadly attacks in the capital and elsewhere.

Read next: Somalia: 30 al Shabaab militants killed, including 3 leaders