Somalia's new prime minister on Saturday dissolved his cabinet because of stiff opposition from parliament to the mammoth list unveiled less than a week ago, officials said.

Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, appointed last month after a damaging spat between his predecessor and internationally-backed President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, was given another two weeks to come up with a new cabinet list.

An Ethiopian court has jailed three British men for between four and six years for allegedly plotting to "establish an Islamic state in Ethiopia", a report said.

Mohamad Sharif and Mohamad Ahmed, who had both been reportedly living in London, were both sentenced to six years and eight months in jail on Wednesday, after the court found them guilty of receiving military training in neighbouring Kenya.

Piracy on the high seas fell last year to an eight-year low worldwide but the number of successful ship hijackings increased due to rising numbers of attacks in the waters off Southeast Asia, a piracy watchdog said Wednesday.

The International Maritime Bureau said in an annual report that 245 pirate attacks were recorded globally in 2014, down from 264 the year before, and nearly half of the 445 reported in 2010 when piracy off Somalia was raging.

Somalia's newly appointed prime minister named a giant cabinet of 60 people late on Sunday, as he warned of the "huge task" ahead to bring peace to the war-torn nation.

Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, endorsed by parliament last month after the president fell out with the previous premier amid bitter infighting, released his choice of names for lawmakers to approve.

East African foreign ministers met in Mogadishu on Saturday to push peace efforts in war-torn Somalia, the first time the regional bloc has met in the country for almost three decades.

Dozens of heavily armed soldiers and police patrolled the streets, where Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab militants regularly carry out bombings and killings.

Somali soldiers put large parts of the capital Mogadishu under lock down Friday ahead of the first meeting of a regional east African trade bloc in the war-torn nation for over two decades.

"Security has been tightened because of the IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) delegation," said Daud Aweys, spokesman for the presidential palace, as representatives began to arrive for one of the largest and highest profile meetings seen in Mogadishu for years.

Somalia's Shebab Militants, Al-QaIda's main affiliate in Africa, on Friday praised the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly in Paris as a "heroic" act.

"They made millions of Muslims happy by taking action. Some misguided people claim that freedom of expression was attacked, but that is not the case, and the two heroic people acted accordingly," Radio Andalus, the official mouthpiece of the militants, said in a commentary.

Somalia's Shebab militants have executed four people accused of spying for the United States, Ethiopia and the country's internationally-backed government, officials and witnesses said.

The executions by firing squad took place at a square in the town of Bardhere, a Shebab stronghold in Somalia's southwestern region of Gedo, late Tuesday, and came a week after the U.S. said it had killed the Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants' intelligence chief in an air strike.

A huge car bomb blast shook Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Sunday after a suicide bomber struck an area close to the heavily-fortified international airport, killing four people, officials said.

A Somalia police official said the car bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into another car, setting off a huge blast that was heard across the coastal city.

The government of war-torn Somalia has moved to reassure residents that there was no outbreak of Ebola in the country, dismissing rumors that a man had brought the virus back with him from Guinea.

"As soon as we heard the rumors of a case of Ebola virus in Somalia, we acted quickly and decisively to isolate the alleged victim, a Somali citizen named Abdulkadir Jinow Barow, and those who had been in contact with him," Health Minister Ali Mohamed Mohamud told reporters.