Six Somali soldiers and one civilian were killed on Friday in an attack by Shebab militants on a military checkpoint in Baidoa and in a car bombing in the capital Mogadishu, officials said.

A Somali military official, Colonel Mohamed Hassan, said six soldiers died when the Shebab, al-Qaida's main African affiliate, carried out a pre-dawn raid against their post near Baidoa, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of Mogadishu.

The U.S. military on Wednesday confirmed killing the intelligence chief of Somalia's Shebab militants in an air strike this week, saying it dealt a setback to the al-Qaida-linked group.

Somalia's government had already announced that the Shebab figure had been taken out in what it called a "joint" operation.

A top intelligence official with Somalia's al-Qaida-affliated Shebab rebels was killed in a U.S. airstrike on Monday, Somalia's government said.

"In a joint operation last night by the Somali national security and the United States, al-Shebab intelligence chief Abdishakur, also known as Tahlil, who replaced the recently arrested former chief, was eliminated," Somalia's National Security Agency said in a statement Tuesday.

Somalia's Shebab militia on Monday played down the surrender and arrest of a senior militant figure, saying the official had left the movement more than a year ago.

The al-Qaida-affiliated rebels said Zakariya Ismail Ahmed Hersi, identified as a top Shebab intelligence official and the subject of a $3 million bounty as part of the U.S. State Department "Rewards for Justice" program, would be of little intelligence value.

The United States "strongly condemns" a Shebab attack that killed three soldiers and a civilian at African Union headquarters in Somalia, the State Department said Friday.

The assault, launched by the country's Al-Qaida-linked rebels in Mogadishu on Thursday, killed three soldiers from the union's local peacekeeping mission known as AMISOM, and a civilian contractor.

Four fighters from Somalia's al-Qaida-linked Shebab rebels were killed and another four captured in an attack by the Islamists against an African Union command center, officials said Friday.

Prayers, tears and solemn visits to mass graves marked the start of commemorations Friday across tsunami-hit nations for the 220,000 people who perished when giant waves decimated coastal areas of the Indian Ocean a decade ago.

On December 26, 2004 a 9.3-magnitude earthquake off Indonesia's western tip generated a series of massive waves that pummeled the coastline of 14 countries as far apart as Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Somalia.

Three African Union soldiers and a civilian were injured Thursday after the Shebab staged a brazen attack on the heavily-fortified headquarters of the force in Somalia.

The headquarters, located within the high-security compound of Mogadishu airport which also houses  several embassies, was successfully repulsed, the AU force known as AMISOM said.  

Ethiopia said Monday it was ready to boost its troop levels in Somalia to replace soldiers from Sierra Leone, which has been forced to withdraw its forces from the mission over Ebola fears. 

A former Somali warlord who allied to the Islamist Shebab group but severed links this summer has been removed from a U.N. sanctions list.

Mohamed Said Atom, a powerful arms dealer, was targeted with U.N. travel and financial sanctions for "kidnapping, piracy and terrorism."