AT least 19 people were yesterday killed in a suicide attack on an African Union base in the Somali town of Beledweyne near Ethiopia’s border.

Ceoafrica gathered that a car rammed into the gate of the building which exploded before gunmen stormed the building.

An al-Shabab spokesman, Abdiasis Abu Musab, told the Reuters news agency that the al-Qaeda-linked group had carried out the attack.

Last month, the Islamist group said it was behind a suicide attack at a popular cafe in Beledweyne which killed 16 people.

Beledweyne is a strategic town, 30km (20 miles) from the Ethiopian border on the main road to the capital, Mogadishu, and also on the major artery linking the north and south of the country.

Al-Shabab militants have been driven out of Somalia’s major towns by a UN-mandated African Union force (Amisom) of some 18,000 soldiers, but still control large parts of southern Somalia.