NAIROBI — Fighting Thursday evening in Somalia left six Burundians dead according to the army and more than 70 according to Shebab rebels who displayed dozens of bodies to witnesses.
Burundi, a tiny central African country struggling to emerge from more than a decade of civil war, is paying the price for its military intervention in Somalia as part of the African Union force.
After heavy fighting Thursday between Shebab Islamists and Somali government troops backed by troops from the AU's AMISOM force, the Shebab showed journalists several dozen dead bodies in Burundian military uniform.
On Friday the rebels showed arms, boots and even food rations they said had been seized from the troops.
It is four years since the African Union force in Somalia deployed to support the fragile transitional government the Shebab have been trying to topple.
The Burundian army dismissed the Shebab claims as "propaganda" but did not deny having suffered losses, admitting six men had been killed and 18 wounded, four of them seriously.
Asked whether Burundian soldiers had also been declared missing, army spokesman Colonel Gaspard Baratuza said it was too early to say.
A Burundian officer explained that losses on the scale of Thursday's could only be accounted for either by "faulty intelligence or by poor planning."
This is not the first major blow dealt to the Burundian contingent since it went into Somalia as part of the AMISOM force in 2008.
At least 43 Burundian soldiers were killed and around 100 others wounded in Mogadishu in an offensive against the Shebab.
Another ten died in an attack by Shebab in September 2010 while 17, including AMISOM's second-in-command at the time the Burundian general Juvenal Niyonguruza, died in a double suicide attack in 2009.
Burundi and Uganda, who have together deployed the 9,000 men who make up the AMISOM force, "have been keeping their losses secret since 2007 and they must have lost several hundred men by now," said a regional analyst based in Nairobi.
"Morale is still good despite these setbacks ... the proof is that soldiers are still volunteering by the thousand for Somalia missions," a senior Burundian officer told AFP.
But the soldiers are drawn largely by the opportunity for financial gain, with a soldier in the AMISOM force earning in one month what he would take a year-and-a-half to earn back home.
Moreover the family of a dead soldier receives a payment of $50,000, according to officers in Mogadishu.
Several Burundian soldiers questioned by AFP in the past few months have said they feel they are fighting "for nothing" in Burundi and prefer to die for "something worthwhile."
For the Burundian political scientist and university professor Salathiel Muntunutwiwe the run of bad luck can be explained by weaknesses in his country's army.
"The current army was created in 2004 out of the former army and seven former rebel movements ... and it still has not become a professional integrated force," he told AFP. "The result is our soldiers go into Somalia for their own personal interests and that can lead them to commit fatal errors."
He also questioned whether Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world, was adequately equipped, adding that the contingent has no helicopters and few tanks.
The army spokesman rejected all those arguments saying his men go into Somalia to serve a cause.
"Our soldiers are very well trained," Baratuza said. "They are motivated by the prospect of helping restore peace in a country that is suffering the way Burundi suffered not so long ago."
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