The three incidents  involve car bombs detonated by Al Shabaab.

A car bomb at a police roadside check point in Kenya killed eight people.

Al Shabaab is blamed, as it is for the car bombs near the Presidential Palace and the airport in Mogadishu.

Seventeen people were killed in those explosions, including a suicide bomber and his accomplice.

Al Shabaab has been driven from the cities in Somalia and its militants are under attacks from United States drone strikes and the Somalia army..

This latest round of bombings typifies Al Shabaab’s determination to show that it can carry out indiscriminate terror operations across East Africa.

The post Al Shabaab car bombs killed 25 in Kenya and Somalia appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

Rex Tillerson will visit five countries regarded as US security partners in what will be the first high-profile visit to the continent by a member of the Trump administration

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s safari follows the scatological  remarks President Donald Trump used to dismiss African countries last January.

Tillerson will visit Chad, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria.

Going for him is his government selling warplanes to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram and US drones being launched against Al Shabaab terrorists in Somalia.

But Tillerson will have to explain why his department has failed to fill several key posts in Africa and why American trade with the continent is slumping.

The post Rex Tillerson to visit some of the countries his president insulted appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

The five countries providing soldiers for a regional force will be there along with the African Union and the European Union.

President Emmanuel Macron fears Islamist militants have scored military and symbolic victories in West Africa while a regional military force has struggled to get off the ground.

So far the so-called G5 Sahel force incorporating Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger is not being more effective than thousands of U.N. peacekeepers, French troops and U.S. military trainers and drones  in stemming  a growing wave of jihadist violence.

Macron said on his three-nation safari last week

it’s urgent to reverse this trend by accelerating support of the force, and its operational calendar.

The post US invited to Paris summit on fighting jihadis in the Sahel appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.