A Spanish court on Wednesday convicted six Somalis for piracy and sentenced them each to 16 and a half years in jail for attacking a Spanish tuna trawler off the coast of Somalia in 2012.

The six men have been held in a Spanish jail since November 2012 since being caught by Dutch sailors after they ambushed the Izurdia off the Horn of Africa using AK-47 assault rifles.

The U.S. military carried out an air strike in Somalia against a senior figure in the Shebab militant group and was assessing if it had been successful, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

In an air raid conducted Saturday south of Mogadishu, U.S. special operations forces "using unmanned aircraft and several Hellfire missiles" targeted Shebab's chief of external operations and planning, spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters.

The U.N. Security Council demanded the immediate release of all hostages held by the Islamic State group, as Jordan vowed to do everything it can to save the life of a pilot captured by the militants.

The 15-member council condemned on Sunday the "heinous and cowardly" murder of a Japanese journalist after the jihadist group claimed he had been beheaded.

Several people are believed to have been killed in an airstrike in southern Somalia apparently targeting a house used by members of the Al-Qaida-affiliated Shebab militia, officials and witnesses said Sunday.

A Shebab source confirmed a missile hit the Islamist-held stronghold of Dinsoor, 270 kilometers (170 miles) west of the capital Mogadishu, late Saturday, but declined to give details on who was targeted and how many casualties there were from the attack.

Over 38,000 Somali children are at "high risk" from dying from starvation despite hunger levels improving by almost a third across the war-torn nation, U.N. experts said Thursday.

The grim assessment, based on the latest data collected by the U.N., comes just over three years since intense drought and war sparked famine in the Horn of Africa nation, killing more than a quarter of a million people.

Somalia's new prime minister on Tuesday proposed a new cabinet after parliament rejected his last list of candidates, prompting international concerns political power struggles were stalling progress.

Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, appointed last month after a damaging spat between his predecessor and internationally-backed President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, appealed to lawmakers to pass the latest list.

A former top commander from Somalia's al-Qaida-affiliated Shebab rebels, Zakariya Ismail Ahmed Hersi, called on his former comrades Tuesday to follow his lead and surrender to the country's internationally-backed government.

"I call on and encourage all my friends to seek out a peaceful way of resolving all conflicts and towards reconciliation, as ... Al-Shebab is now in total collapse," Hersi said in his first public appearance since his surrender last month.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in war-torn Somalia on Sunday amid tight security, a rare visit by a foreign leader to the war-torn nation.

Hundreds of soldiers and police officers had shut down much of the capital's streets, where on Thursday five people were killed in a suicide attack on a hotel housing the Turkish delegation in Mogadishu.

At least 23 people been killed in Somalia in clan-related violence caused by a land dispute, officials and elders said.

The clashes between armed militia from two groups broke out around the villages of Burdhinle and Hada-Ogle, situated in central Somalia's Hiiran region and close to the border with Ethiopia.

Somalia's Shebab militants, al-Qaida's main affiliate in Africa, on Wednesday urged supporters in Europe to follow the example of Islamist gunmen who carried out attacks in Paris.

The Shebab, who called the attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly in Paris a "heroic operation" against a "lair of evil and center of disbelief", offered specific warnings to France.