Somalia is the worst country on Earth to be a mother, according to a report published by Save the Children on Monday which calls for more action to protect mothers and children in crisis-hit areas.

The London-based charity estimates that 800 mothers and 18,000 young children are dying around the world every day from largely preventable causes.

The United States secured long term access Monday to a military base in Djibouti that it uses to launch counter-terrorism missions, including drone strikes, in Yemen and the Horn of Africa.

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Djibouti counterpart Ismail Omar Guelleh announced the renewed "long term lease" on Camp Lemonnier to reporters as they met at the White House.

At least seven people were killed Saturday, among them a prominent Somali official, in a bomb attack by Islamist militants in the center of the capital Mogadishu, officials said.

Security sources said they believed a bomb was attached to a car being driven by Abdikafi Hilowle, a police official and former secretary for the city's administration, and detonated remotely. Other officials said the blast may have been from a roadside bomb.

Somalia has temporarily recalled its ambassador to Kenya following the arrest and alleged harassment of one of its diplomats in Nairobi, officials said Monday.

The diplomatic protest comes amid an ongoing crackdown in Kenya against suspected Islamist militants that has also seen thousands of Somalis and ethnic Somalis detained by Kenyan police and dozens of them deported.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta's first year in office has been marked by a string of "worrisome cases" of rights infringements and by rampant impunity, two rights groups said in a report Wednesday.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission( KHRC) and the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) said Kenyan authorities "have attempted to clamp down on dissenting voices, either through the adoption of restrictive legislation aimed at further regulating the NGO or media sectors."

Somalia's Al-Qaida linked Shebab said they had assassinated a lawmaker on Tuesday, the second such killing in 24 hours and the latest in a series of attacks in the war-ravaged capital of Mogadishu.

Abdiaziz Isak was shot "several times and he died instantly," police officer Mohamed Dalane said, close to where the politician was killed in the city's Madina district.

A Somali lawmaker was assassinated and another wounded on Monday by a car bomb in Mogadishu, the prime minister said, the latest in a series of bomb attacks in the conflict-ravaged capital.

"Somalia has today lost a committed parliamentarian who worked tirelessly to serve the people of Somalia and help rebuild our country," Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed said in a statement, referring to slain MP Isak Mohamed. 

The U.N. refugee agency said Thursday it was "disturbed by reports of harassment and other abuses" in a Kenyan counter-terrorism operation targeting Somalis that has seen thousands arrested and scores expelled.

Conditions in a sports stadium being used as a giant holding pen and in police stations are "overcrowded and sanitary conditions are inadequate," the UNHCR said in a statement, adding that 82 Somalis had been deported back to their war-torn country.

Armed forces from Somalia's rival northern regions faced off on Wednesday over a contested region, with both the United Nations and United States calling for calm.

Troops from self-declared Somaliland in the northwest and soldiers from autonomous Puntland in the northeast have deployed around the town of Taleh, a contested zone in the northern Sool region.

Kenya's defence ministry said Friday its troops had freed two Kenyans kidnapped near its northern border by Somalia's al-Qaida-linked Shebab rebels in 2011.

Officials identified the two as James Kiarie Gichuhi, a driver with CARE International, and Daniel Njuguna Wanyoike, initially identified as a worker with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) but later said to be working with a logistics firm that may have been delivering medicines to the charity.