The group claimed responsibility for the attack because it considers the United Arab Emirates an “enemy” for supporting the Somali government.
Three Emirati soldiers and a Bahraini military officer were killed in an attack in Somalia.
The Al-Qaeda-linked armed group Al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for the attack on a training mission at a military base in the Somali capital Mogadishu, United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities said on Sunday.
Saturday's attack targeted troops at the General Gordon military base. Details about the attack and victims remain scarce. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud offered his condolences to the United Arab Emirates.
The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defense announced the death of three of its troops and a Bahraini soldier in a “terrorist act,” adding only that two others were injured.
Anwar Gargash, a senior Emirati diplomat, offered his condolences to the dead and a speedy recovery to the injured.
“No treasonous act will stop us from continuing the message of security and combating extremism and terrorism in all its forms,” Gargash wrote in X.
Bahrain, an island nation in the Gulf off the coast of Saudi Arabia, did not immediately acknowledge the attack.
Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack in an online statement, claiming it killed several people involved in the Emirati military effort. He described the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhs in the Arabian Peninsula, as an “enemy” of Islamic law for its support of the Somali government in the fight against the armed group.
Al-Shabab, or “the youth” in Arabic, was born from the many years of anarchy in Somalia following the civil war of 1991. The Al Qaeda affiliate once controlled Mogadishu. Eventually, an African Union (AU)-led force, backed by the United States and other countries, expelled the group from the capital.
Since then, al-Shabab has been fighting the country's federal government and the AU-mandated peacekeeping mission as it seeks to establish a new government based on its interpretation of Islamic law.
The group routinely carries out bomb attacks in highly populated areas throughout the country.
On Tuesday, at least 10 people were killed and about 20 injured in multiple attacks in a busy market in Mogadishu.
Al-Shabab has also carried out attacks in neighboring Kenya since Nairobi provides troops and materiel to the AU force in the country.
In recent years, the United Arab Emirates has increasingly invested in ports in East Africa, including the breakaway region of Somaliland in Somalia.
Securing Somalia fits into the Emirates' broader concerns about security in the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea. Somali piracy has recently resumed after several years amid attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on shipping in the Red Sea.
In 2019, al-Shabab claimed responsibility for an attack that killed a man working for Dubai's P&O Ports.
