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 Somali militant group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the
attack, which lasted several hours, and said it had killed 14
peacekeepers. Witnesses reported hearing bomb blasts and volleys of
gunfire through the day.
"We targeted the enemies at a time they were celebrating Christmas,"
Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab's military operations
spokesman, told Reuters.
In the past, al Shabaab has exaggerated the number of soldiers it
has killed, while officials have played down losses.
The al Qaeda-aligned militants want to topple the Western-backed
Mogadishu government and describe AU troops as "Christian enemies".
The Islamist group also wants to impose its own strict version of
sharia law in the country.
 The raid showed al Shabaab's ability to carry out high-profile
attacks in the capital even as it is losing territory in rural areas
to AU peacekeepers who have launched two major offensives this year.
"The terrorists, some of whom were disguised in Somali National Army
uniforms, breached the base camp around lunch hour and attempted to
gain access to critical infrastructure, during which five of them
were killed and three others captured," the AU peacekeeping mission
in Somalia, AMISOM, said in a statement.
It did not disclose the nationalities of the peacekeepers and
civilian contractor killed in the attack.
The AU's Halane base is on the edge of the Mogadishu international
airport compound, which houses the base for U.N. operations in
Somalia as well as the British and Italian embassies and has a tight
security cordon and blast walls.
Western diplomats who were celebrating Christmas in the sweltering
Mogadishu heat were evacuated to safety bunkers until the raid was
over.
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Aleem Siddique, spokesman for the United Nations in Somalia, said
all U.N. staff were safe and accounted for.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, Marie Harf, called the
attack "a cowardly terrorist act", and said U.S. support for the
people of Somalia, the African Union Mission in Somalia, and Somali
government forces in their efforts to defeat al-Shabaab would not
waver.
Al Shabaab was pushed out of Mogadishu in 2011 but it still controls
chunks of the countryside in south and central Somalia. This year it
has lost several key towns, including the port city of Barawe,
during the two AMISOM offensives.
(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar; Additional reporting by
David Brunnstrom in Washington; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by
Ruth Pitchford and Pravin Char)
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