The group claimed the attack because it considers the UAE an “enemy” that supports the Somali government.
Three Emirati soldiers and a Bahraini military officer were killed in the attack in Somalia.
Authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Sunday claimed responsibility for the attack on a training mission at a military base in Somalia's capital Mogadishu by the al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabaab.
Saturday's attack targeted soldiers at General Gordon Military Base. Details regarding the attack and casualties remain scarce. Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud offered his condolences to the UAE.
The UAE Ministry of Defense announced that three soldiers and a Bahraini soldier had been killed in the “act of terrorism,” adding only that two others were injured.
The Emirates' senior diplomat, Anwar Gargash, expressed his condolences to the dead and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.
“No act of betrayal will prevent us from continuing our message of security and security and fighting all forms of extremism and terrorism,” Gargash wrote to X.
Bahrain, an island nation in a bay off the coast of Saudi Arabia, did not immediately acknowledge the attack.
Al-Shabaab claimed the attack in an online statement, claiming that several people involved in military operations in the United Arab Emirates were killed. The report described the UAE, a coalition of seven emirates on the Arabian Peninsula, as an “enemy” of Islamic law for supporting Somalia's government in its fight against armed groups.
Al-Shabab, which means “youth” in Arabic, was born out of Somalia's years of anarchy following the 1991 civil war. Al Qaeda-affiliated groups once occupied Mogadishu. Over time, African Union (AU)-led forces, with support from the United States and other countries, drove the group out of the capital.
Since then, al-Shabaab has been fighting the country's federal government and the AU-led peacekeeping mission, seeking to form a new government based on its interpretation of Islamic law.
This group routinely carries out terrorist bombings in densely populated areas across the country.
At least 10 people were killed and about 20 injured in multiple attacks on a crowded market in Mogadishu on Tuesday.
Al-Shabaab has also carried out attacks in neighboring Kenya, as Nairobi provides troops and supplies to AU forces in the country.
The UAE has increased investment in ports in East Africa in recent years, including in the breakaway Somaliland region.
Somalia's security fits into the Emirates' broader concerns about security in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Piracy in Somalia recently resumed for the first time in years amid attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen's Houthi rebels.
In 2019, al-Shabab claimed the attack and death of a man working at Dubai's P&O port.
