Story highlights

Al-Shabaab says base attack was revenge for U.S. airstrike that killed their leader

2 militants detonated car bomb Thursday to breach heavily fortified base in Mogadishu

African Union: 7 Al-Shabaab, 3 African Union soliders and 1 civilian were killed in the raid

U.N. calls the attack on the base, which houses its Somali headquarters "reprehensible"

CNN  — 

Al-Shabaab said it attacked an African Union military base in Somalia on Thursday in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike that killed their leader near Barawe in September.

“Al-Shabaab has carried out the AU military base attack to revenge the killing of our leader, Ahmed Godane,” the group’s spokesman Ali Dheere said on Andalus radio,a pro-Al-Shabaab broadcaster, Friday.

Seven Al-Shabaab militants are dead after they attacked Somalia’s largest base for African Union troops, according to the African Union Mission in Somalia.

Two militants in a car detonated themselves inside the Halane Military base in Mogadishu, AMISOM spokesman Ali Aden Houmed said.

Three AU soldiers from Uganda and a civilian died in the attack, AMISOM said on its website. Seven Al-Shabab soldiers were killed, AU said.

The heavily fortified base also houses several U.N. and international agencies.

Smoke rises from the Westgate mall in Nairobi on September 23, 2013. Kenyan troops were locked in a fierce firefight with Somali militants inside an upmarket Nairobi shopping mall in a final push to end a siege that has left 43 dead and 200 wounded with an unknown number of hostages still being held. Somalia's Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab rebels said the carnage at the part Israeli-owned complex mall was in retaliation for Kenya's military intervention in Somalia, where African Union troops are battling the Islamists.
Smoke rises from the Westgate mall in Nairobi on September 23, 2013. Kenyan troops were locked in a fierce firefight with Somali militants inside an upmarket Nairobi shopping mall in a final push to end a siege that has left 43 dead and 200 wounded with an unknown number of hostages still being held. Somalia's Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab rebels said the carnage at the part Israeli-owned complex mall was in retaliation for Kenya's military intervention in Somalia, where African Union troops are battling the Islamists.
CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images
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“I condemn this reprehensible attack on the AMISOM base camp in Mogadishu which also hosts the UN Headquarters for Somalia,” U.N. Special Envoy for Somalia Nicholas Kay said.

He praised the quick response of AU forces to the attack.

Maman S. Sidikou, special representative of the AU Commission chairperson (SRCC) for Somalia and head of AMISOM, offered his condolences to the families of the victims and “applauded the quick response and bravery of the … troops in quelling this reprehensible attack,” according to AMISOM.

Al-Shabaab has been waging war in Somalia in an effort to implement a stricter form of Islamic law, or sharia.

Established in 2007, the U.N.-backed AMISOM currently has some 20,000 African Union troops deployed in the impoverished nation to “conduct peace support operations” and to “stabilize the situation.”

What is Al-Shabaab and what does it want?