Islamist attack on hotel in Somali capital kills 25 – police

Mogadishu residents have started to flee from their homes after military forces, who are against Somalia's president’s term extension, took over new positions along Maka al Mukarrama, a key road that is often used by the government officials. Residents say they fear armed clashes will renew in the city.

Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 22 civilians with knives and machetes in an overnight raid on villages near the town of Beni in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a local official said on Wednesday.

A massive real estate development is changing the landscape on the outskirts of Mogadishu. The Daru Salam project encourages the Somali diaspora to invest in the country. The developments feature modern housing, leisure and security infrastructure.

Region president says transport links to Addis Ababa blocked. Video credit: Najib Dayib, Ogedenia Media Agency

Four women and a six-year-old child were reportedly injured in the stabbing, which occurred in the resort town of Rimini. Prosecutors believe the man was under the influence of drugs.

Somalia's women's rights activists have long been calling for increased female representation in the country's parliament.

Several people were killed as a huge blast went off on a road near the main international airport in the Somali capital. The al-Shabab extremist group has claimed responsibility.

A car bomb exploded on a road leading to the airport in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Wednesday, killing at least eight people. Abdikadir Abdirahman, director of Aamin Ambulance service, put the death toll at eight.

Several people are killed in a suicide car bombing in Mogadishu, just days after Somalia's divided leadership agrees on a timetable for long-delayed elections. Also, supporters of a Zimbabwean freelance journalist charged with getting fake accreditation to help colleagues from the New York Times enter the country say he's being set up. Jeffrey Moyo pleads not guilty as his trial begins. And Mali's 1-0 Africa Cup of Nations win over Tunisia is overshadowed by a final whistle controversy. The referee calls time minutes early and the Tunisians refuse to return to the pitch.

Al Shabaab militants attacked several police stations and security checkpoints in Somalia's capital Mogadishu early on Wednesday, officials and the militants said, a show of force as the nation prepares for a much-delayed presidential election.

Former Somali leader Hassan Sheikh Mohamud won the presidency again on Sunday in a vote by parliamentarians behind blast walls in an airport hangar as a popular election remains impossible in the conflict-wracked nation.

Each morning in this Somali border town, 11-year-old Bashir Nur Salat plots his day's mission behind a crooked wire fence. Armed with only a friend's yellow school shirt, a borrowed book and toothy grin, he eyes his prize through the mesh: lunch. Bashir lives where three crises converge - global warming, spiraling food prices and war. He, like millions of others in Somalia, are in the crosshairs of what some aid workers are calling the "The Three Cs": climate change, costs and conflict.