Kenyan police officers described in court Friday how they battled the gunmen who carried out last year's Westgate mall massacre, in the trial of four men accused of supporting the attack.

The attack, in which at least 67 people were killed, was claimed by Somalia's al-Qaida-linked Shebab insurgents.

The United States has sent a handful of military advisers to Somalia in recent months to help bolster an African Union force fighting Islamist militants there, officials said Friday.

The deployment marks the first stationing of U.S. troops in the troubled country since 1993, when two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down and 18 Americans were killed in a disastrous operation.

Somalia, although the militants quickly denied the claim.

The Kenyan military said the Thursday evening raid targeted a Shebab camp in Garbarahey in Gedo region, situated around 600 kilometers (390 miles) northwest of the capital Mogadishu and near the border with Kenya and Ethiopia.

Militants from the al-Qaida-linked Shebab on Wednesday banned citizens in the areas of Somalia they control from using the Internet.

They gave all communication companies providing web services a 15-day ultimatum to shut down their operations.

Deputies in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region on Wednesday elected a former national prime minister, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali Gaas, as the new president of an area still threatened by Islamist militants and struggling to shed its image as a pirate haven.

An economist by training, Ali was elected by lawmakers by the narrowest of margins, scoring 33 votes in the third round of polling, just one more than incumbent President Abdurahman Mohamed Farole, with one vote void.

Somalia's al-Qaida-linked Shebab said Thursday it carried out a twin bombing of a hotel in Mogadishu that killed 11, boasting it was the start of its campaign for the new year.

"This is the beginning of 2014," Shebab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage said in a New Year message, a day after the hotel attacks.

At least eight people were killed when a car bomb rammed into one of Mogadishu's top hotels Wednesday and a second vehicle exploded as the wounded were being treated.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the attack, which also appeared to involve a commando of gunmen, bore all the hallmarks of Somalia's al-Qaida-linked Shebab group.

War-torn Somalia flew back home Monday some 130 citizens who had been working in troubled South Sudan, the latest of thousands of foreigners to flee violence in the world's youngest country.

Western nations including the United States and Britain flew in military aircraft to evacuate their citizens after fighting began in South Sudan two weeks ago.

At least four soldiers were killed and 11 people wounded Friday in an explosion in the Somali capital Mogadishu, police and witnesses said.

The roadside bomb went off outside a tea shop where soldiers were relaxing, a police official said, blaming the attack on al-Qaida-linked Shebab militants.

Somalia's parliament on Saturday approved as the new prime minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed, a political newcomer and economist who faces tough challenges in the war-torn nation.

All but three lawmakers in parliament voted to approve President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's nomination of the economist who has worked with several international organisations and banks.