Two French soldiers died and 17 "terrorists" were killed in a failed bid to free a French hostage in southern Somalia from Islamists holding him since 2009, the French defense minister said Saturday.

The overnight operation was launched by France's elite DGSE secret service, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a statement, adding that the raid was sparked by the "intransigence of the terrorists who have refused to negotiate for three and a half years and were holding Denis Allex in inhuman conditions."

France on Wednesday pledged to give one million euros ($1.3 million) to help the poorest of the hundreds of thousands of people in southern Somalia forced from their homes by war and famine.

The aid will enable the International Organization for Migration to put in place a year-long support program for the displaced and those sheltering them, the IOM said in a statement.

At least nine people have died in clashes between Al-Qaida-linked Islamist rebels and Somali government forces and their Ethiopian allies, a village elder said Sunday amid conflicting claims from both sides.

Shebab fighters late Saturday ambushed a convoy of several hundred Somali and Ethiopian troops that was advancing on two towns in the southern Gedo region still controlled by the Shebab -- Bardhere and Burhdubo.

Troops from the Somali region of Puntland on Sunday rescued 22 hostages held by pirates for almost three years after their ship was seized off the Yemeni coast, the authorities said, adding that the men bore signs of torture.

The crew from the Dubai-owned and Panamanian-flagged MV Iceberg were freed after two weeks of fighting and a siege of the vessel off the coast of Somalia, the Puntland authorities said in a statement.

55 Somalis and Ethiopians drowned or went missing after their boat capsized off Somalia on Tuesday in the worst such disaster in the area in almost two years, the United Nations said.

The U.N. refugee agency said Thursday the incident represents "the biggest loss of life" in the Gulf of Aden since February 2011 when 57 Somali refugees and migrants from the Horn of Africa drowned while attempting to reach Yemen.

Tens of thousands of refugees living in urban areas in Kenya must return to remote and overcrowded camps, the government said Tuesday, demanding all aid be cut off outside the camps.

"All asylum seekers and refugees from Somalia should report to Dadaab refugee camps, while asylum seekers from other countries should report to Kakuma refugee camp," an official statement printed in national newspapers read.

A huge blast shook the predominantly Somali neighborhood of Eastleigh in the Kenyan capital Nairobi Sunday evening, police said.

"There has been an explosion in the area. We do not have any more details currently about the nature of the explosion or whether there are casualties involved," area police chief Moses Nyakwama told Agence France Presse.

A car bomb in the Somali capital killed three people and wounded several others in the latest attack in war-ravaged Mogadishu, police said Friday.

"The car exploded while the driver was moving in it... three people were killed," said police officer Aden Mohammed, adding it was not clear if the driver had been targeted. "We are still investigating the blast."

A roadside bomb in the Kenyan capital wounded at least eight people, the latest in a string of attacks, police said Wednesday.

"We have confirmed eight casualties who have all been rushed to hospital," Nairobi police chief Moses Nyakwama told Agence France Presse.

Somalia's Islamist Shebab killed at least ten soldiers from the northern Puntland region, an area where the al-Qaida linked militants are feared to be carving out new bases, officials said Wednesday.

Khalif Issa Mudan, defense minister of the semi-autonomous region, said that ten of his troops "were killed by Shebab after a roadside bomb exploded by their vehicle" on the road to the mountainous Galgala area late Tuesday.