**Two huge explosions have gone off at an African Union peacekeepers’ base in the Somali capital, witnesses say.**The Islamist al-Shabab group has said it carried out a double suicide attack, reports the AFP news agency. One witness said he had seen two bodies.
A security official told the BBC that two white vehicles bearing UN logos exploded after being let into the base.
Al-Shabab on Tuesday vowed to avenge a US raid in southern Somalia, which reportedly killed an al-Qaeda suspect.
Six injured peacekeepers were seen being carried away from the base near the Mogadishu airport, says Reuters news agency.
“I have seen the bodies of two people who were brought from the area,” said a witness, Ali Mohamed, adding that they looked like Somalis, AFP reports.
“The soldiers at the gate assumed they were UN cars and opened the gate for them,” the security official told the BBC’s Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu.
“When the cars entered, one of them sped toward a petrol depot and exploded. The other one exploded in a nearby area.”
There are some 5,000 AU troops, mostly from Uganda and Burundi, in Mogadishu, protecting the weak, UN-backed government.
Earlier, al-Shabab demanded that France ensure that AU forces are pulled out of Somalia.
Reporting from inside Somalia
Somali demands for French hostage
This was one of several demands issued by al-Shabab for the release of a French security adviser captured in July.
Al-Shabab and its allies control most of southern and central Somalia, while the government, helped by the AU force, just runs parts of Mogadishu.
The country has not had a functioning central government since 1991, leading to a complete breakdown of law and order both on land and in recent years in Somali waters.
President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Islamist and former insurgent, was chosen in January after UN-brokered peace talks.
He has vowed to implement Sharia but al-Shabab accuses him of being a Western puppet.
Years of fighting and anarchy have left some three million people - half the population - needing food aid.