A pre-dawn raid by the terrorist group al-Shabaab on a military base in southern Somalia has left at least 18 people dead, officials told dpa on Sunday.

Two regional politicians, three of their bodyguards and one local aid worker were killed by a roadside bomb in Somalia, an official said Saturday.

An army base in southern Somalia was struck by car bombs and gunfire on Wednesday, a military official and witnesses said, in an attack claimed by the Al-Shabaab militant group.

Five people, including three civilians, were killed in a gun battle in Somalia on Monday after Al-Shabaab militants opened fire on a checkpoint in the capital Mogadishu, officials said.

Suspected al-Shabaab fighters have attacked a police camp in eastern Kenya, and three of them were killed as a result, police said on Saturday.

A Nairobi court on Wednesday found three men guilty of abetting Somali jihadists who carried out a 2015 attack on Garissa University in northeast Kenya in which 148 people were killed.

A car bomb exploded near the Somali parliament Saturday, killing eight people, emergency workers said, hours after militia executed nine civilians from a clan with suspected links to the Islamist Al-Shabaab.

US forces said Friday that two civilians had died in an airstrike in Somalia, the first time it has admitted non-combatant deaths since launching a wave of missiles targeting jihadist fighters.

At least eight Somali soldiers were killed when the Al-Shabaab group overran their military camp on the outskirts of the town of Kismayo early Saturday, military officials and local elders said.

Police officer Mohamed Dahir told DPA on Sunday that many of the dead were pulled out of rubble of buildings damaged by the blast.

Somali militants have ambushed and killed 12 Ugandan troops serving under the African Union (AU) in Somalia, a Ugandan Defence Ministry spokesman said Monday.

A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Mogadishu army camp on Monday, killing at least three soldiers a day after the army chief escaped an attack on his convoy, military sources said.