BAIDOA, Somalia Jan 25 (Garowe Online) - Somali insurgents raided and briefly seized a major military airbase in southern Somalia on Friday after out-gunning base soldiers, a military official has said.

“The insurgents who attacked Baledogle [airbase] captured the base and looted weapons, medicines and other equipment,” local police commissioner Isse Moallim Yasir told Garowe Online.

Three government soldiers were killed and six others wounded in the short skirmish with the heavily-armed rebels, who briefly captured the base and held other soldiers hostage.

Baledogle, 100KM northwest of the capital Mogadishu, is located in Lower Shabelle region.

The group of insurgents also burned two vehicles, including a vehicle belonging to base commander Col. Osman Nur, according to Yasir.

One rebel fighter also died in the battle, but the insurgents took the dead body with them as they vacated the base, according to local sources.

The wounded government soldiers were later rushed to medical facilities in Mogadishu for treatment.

A spokesman for the al-Shabaab guerrillas claimed responsibility for the raid, saying that there was “no resistance” at the base and denied reports of any deaths on the al-Shabaab side.

Al-Shabaab spokesman Mukhtar Robow “Abu Mansur” told a Mogadishu-based radio station later today that they captured several Somali soldiers alive, while others “hid in the mosque.”

He said al-Shabaab later released all the captured soldiers.

The spokesman said al-Shabaab fighters were behind a deadly attack in the central Hiran region yesterday. He claimed the fighters killed 11 government soldiers in that attack. [ Full story]

His later claim could not be independently verified.

Somalia's guerrillas have vowed to wage war until Ethiopian troops withdraw from the country. The Ethiopian army helped the Somali government dislodge Islamist rulers from Mogadishu in January 2007, but the country has seen nothing but violence since.

Source: Garowe Online