CAIRO, June 11 (Aswat Masriya) - Egypt’s foreign ministry condemned on Saturday an attack on an Ethiopian military base in the town of Halgan in Somalia, which is also a base for the African Union's peacekeeping forces.

The Islamist militant group al-Shabab attacked the Ethiopian military base and killed about 30 Ethiopian conscripts last Thursday, Egypt's foreign ministry said in a statement.

According to Reuters, al-Shabab militants group said that a suicide bomb raided the entrance of the base in Halgan, in Central Somalia, and killed 60 Ethiopian conscripts.

The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) condemned what it described as a “failed attack”. In a statement on Thursday, AMISOM said that the militants were “repulsed by AMISOM and the Somali National Army (SNA) troops on the ground and suffered heavy casualties.”

AMISOM said that “hundreds” of al-Shabab fighters were captured and a significant amount of their weapons were destroyed.

The al-Qaeda linked militants, al-Shabab, regularly attack (AMISOM) which has developed about 22,000 peacekeepers to help Somali government forces stabilise the country, which has been mired in conflict since civil war broke out in 1991.