...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
base Tuesday before storming the compound, with witnesses reporting many dead, although the AU insisted it had fought off the attack.
Eye-witnesses said the Shabaab had taken over the camp and were looting the weapons stores, but the AU force in Somalia (AMISOM) insisted it was in control of the base.
Witnesses spoke of more than 20 bodies at the site, while the Shabaab claimed to have killed 50. AMISOM was unable to confirm any casualty figures.
"The base is still under AMISOM control, reports that the base has been taken over and our weapons captured are false," an AMISOM statement said without giving further details.
The Shabaab said the attack in Janale district, 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Mogadishu in the Lower Shabelle region, was Dire Revenge for the killing of seven civilians by Ugandan troops at a wedding in the town of Merka in July.
"The attack started with a suicide bomb kaboom and the fighters stormed the base, engaging in fighting that continued inside the military camp for about 40 minutes," said Shabaab front man Abdulaziz Abu Musab.
He claimed that "about 50 soldiers" were killed in the attack and that others drowned in a nearby river while fleeing.
"The mujahedeen fighters have taken complete control of the town and the military camp as well and looted all the heavy weaponry," Abu Musab said. "This attack was aimed to retaliate against the killing of innocent civilians in Merka by the Ugandan troops."
An AMISOM front man said the Janale camp was manned by up to 150 Ugandan soldiers but could not confirm any casualty figures as he was "still waiting details" from the area commander.
Mohammed Shire, a Somali military commander in the area, said there had been "a heavy kaboom and fighting."
Witnesses said Shabaab fighters had breached the barricades around the camp.
"Many people stormed the camp after AU soldiers fled, and they started looting together with Al-Shabaab
... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda...
," said local resident Hussein Idris, who said gunnies loaded corpses of AU troops onto trucks.
The Shabaab has previously gathered the bodies of dead soldiers for use in propaganda videos of its attacks.
"They were collecting dead bodies, I saw nearly 30 soldiers killed during the fighting," Idris said.
Another eyewitness, Ahmed Ali, said he had seen AMISOM troops fleeing the base, and had counted as many as 20 bodies.
"The fighters also looted weapons and ammunition," Ali said.
Another local eyewitness described how a Shabaab jacket wallah first attacked the camp gates.
"Heavy fighting
... as opposed to the more usual name-calling or slapsy...
broke out after a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into the camp," said Ali Moalim Yusuf. "I saw heavily armed fighters chanting 'Allahu Akbar' ('God is greatest') pouring into the base."
The Shabaab, fighting to overthrow Somalia's internationally-backed and AU-protected government, has launched a string of similar attacks.
In June, Shabaab fighters killed dozens of Burundian soldiers when they overran an AMISOM outpost northwest of Mogadishu. The holy warriors also stage frequent suicide kabooms inside the capital.
But the 22,000-strong AMISOM force has also made significant gains against the Shabaab, pushing them out of several strongholds in the southwest of the country.
Decades of fighting and erratic rains mean that some three million people in the Horn of Africa nation remain in need of aid, according to the United Nations
...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
.
On Monday, aid experts warned Somalia remains in a "critical" state four years after a devastating famine in which over 250,000 people died, with a sharp rise in those needing food aid in the past six months.
Poor rains have impacted harvests, leaving nearly 215,000 children aged under five acutely malnourished and with almost 40,000 of those children facing a "high risk of disease and death", the U.N. said.
[AnNahar] Three 
Several people were killed when a powerful suicide car bomb exploded near Somalia's parliament in the capital Mogadishu on Saturday, police and witnesses said. AlQaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels claimed responsibility for the bombing, the latest in a surge of attacks in Mogadishu during Islam's holy month of Ramadhan.