Do you think it is ethical for OAU to refuse their dead Soldiers? if they can refuse their own soldiers, Would they admit crimes against Soldiers? How can Alshabaab find 70 Dead Soldiers of their Own From Burundi? Burundi don't look like Somalis.The bodies were displayed in one of the few parts of Mogadishu controlled by al-Shabab
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BBC, Saturday, October 22, 2011
The African Union has denied that 70 bodies displayed by Somalia's militant Islamist group al-Shabab were those of its troops killed in fighting.
Al-Shabab showed the bodies to journalists, claiming they were Burundian soldiers killed in Mogadishu on Thursday.
An AU spokesman dismissed the claim as propaganda and said 10 of its soldiers had been killed and two were missing.
"We have killed more than 70 of the enemy soldiers... We have inflicted heavy losses on them [AU troops] and you can see their dead bodies," al-Shabab
spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said, AFP reports.
Photographs show a row of bodies - some of them decapitated - on display in Alamada, an al-Shabab stronghold outside Mogadishu.
Many of the dead were wearing flak jackets and helmets - equipment issued to AU troops, the AP news agency reports.
But AU spokesman Lt-Col Paddy Ankunda said al-Shabab had dressed up their own dead troops in uniforms.
BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says that in the past, the AU has been reluctant to admit to heavy losses.
Al-Shabab has been weakened but the ongoing battle for total control of Mogadishu and the recent suicide bombings show that the capital is still far from stable, he says.
The al-Qaeda linked group controls many areas of southern Somalia.
All are controlled by al-Shabab, which restricts access to their areas by international aid agencies.
