Somali government forces backed by African Union troops have recaptured a strategic island on the country's south coast from al-Qaida-linked Shebab rebels, officials and witnesses said Monday.

A statement from the AU's AMISON force said Kudha island, situated in the autonomous Lower Juba region and around 70 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the port city of Kismayo, was taken over the weekend.

At least three people have died in a gun and grenade attack on Wajir town in northeast Kenya, the latest in a series cross-border raids by Somalia's Shebab militants, officials said Wednesday.

Security sources said four armed men threw a grenade at a small shop in the town centre on Tuesday night. They also opened fire before escaping on foot.

Somalia's Shebab militants have killed one man and wounded three others in a shooting in the northern Kenyan town of Mandera, officials said Monday.

The latest cross-border attack by Somalia's al-Qaida came two days after it ambushed the local governor's convoy.

The U.S. military has carried out an air strike against a senior al-Shebab militant in Somalia and is still reviewing the results of the operation, the Pentagon said Friday.

The operation, which did not involve U.S. troops on the ground, took place on Thursday on a road south of Mogadishu and focused on "a high-value target," spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters.

Three people were killed and eight more wounded on Friday in the latest cross-border raid by Somalia's Shebab militants in northeastern Kenya, an official said.

Grenades and gunfire were aimed at a convoy carrying Mandera county governor Ali Roba, leaving two police and a civilian dead, although Roba escaped unharmed, Mandera East deputy county commissioner Elvis Korir said.

Somalia's Al-Qaida-affiliated Shebab militants on Thursday attacked a fortified area in the central town of Baidoa, home to a key regional government headquarters, United Nations compound and airport, security officials said.

Officials said five gunmen opened fire at the gate of the high-security zone but were held off by Ethiopian and Somali government troops. A source said an Ethiopian soldier was killed, while three of the attackers blew themselves up, another was shot dead and the fifth was shot and wounded, ending the attack.

Concerned about a growing number of Canadian youths traveling overseas to join jihadists, and lacking an immediate alternative, political leaders have asked parents to keep a more watchful eye on their children for signs of extremism.

"These situations are disastrous," Quebec premier Philippe Couillard said Friday, a day after Canadians learned that six of their own, aged 18 and 19, including two young women, had left for Syria via Turkey mid-January.

Four Thai fishermen held hostage by Somali pirates for nearly five years have been released, local officials said Friday.

"We collected the four Thailand men from a remote area," said Omar Sheikh Ali, an official in Somalia's central Galmudug administration.

Insurgents in Somalia's capital fired a barrage of mortar rounds Thursday targeting the highly fortified presidential palace and main government compound, killing a guard, security officials said.

There was no claim of any responsibility for the explosions, but the Al-Qaida-affiliated Shebab rebels have staged a string of attacks in their fight to overthrow the country's internationally-backed government.

A navy flak jacket over his sky-blue shirt, Neil Wigan peered through the bulletproof glass window at six uneven wooden poles in front of a sand dune.

"There are more of them now," the British ambassador to Somalia said, driving past the execution posts that convicts are tied to before being shot by firing squad. "It isn't a particularly reassuring sign of progress."