A Somali military officer says a suicide bomber blew himself up at a military academy west of Somalia’s capital, killing at least five soldiers, like reported by time.com.

Col. Abdi Hassan said the bomber dressed in a military uniform walked into the Somali military training camp on Monday morning and detonated explosives strapped to his waist near soldiers and officers.

He said the bomber, posing as a military trainee, had crossed the gate checkpoint and targeted soldiers and officers resting after their daily military exercises.

Somalia’s Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, have claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Trump administration, like reported by ap.org, will move forward with the sale of high-tech aircraft to Nigeria for its campaign against Boko Haram Islamic extremists despite concerns over abuses committed by the African nation’s security forces, according to U.S. officials.

Congress is expected to receive formal notification within weeks, setting in motion a deal with Nigeria that the Obama administration had planned to approve at the very end of Barack Obama’s presidency. The arrangement will call for Nigeria to purchase up to 12 Embraer A-29 Super Tucano aircraft with sophisticated targeting gear for nearly $600 million, one of the officials said.

The officials were not authorized to discuss the terms of the sale publicly and requested anonymity to speak about internal diplomatic conversations.

Though President Donald Trump has made clear his intention to approve the sale of the aircraft, the National Security Council is still working on the issue. Military sales to several other countries are also expected to be approved but are caught up in an ongoing White House review. Nigeria has been trying to buy the aircraft since 2015.

The Nigerian air force has been accused of bombing civilian targets at least three times in recent years. In the worst incident, a fighter jet on Jan. 17 repeatedly bombed a camp at Rann, near the border with Cameroon, where civilians had fled from Boko Haram. Between 100 and 236 civilians and aid workers were killed, according to official and community leaders’ counts.

That bombing occurred on the same day the Obama administration intended to officially notify Congress the sale would go forward. Instead, it was abruptly put on hold, according to an individual who worked on the issue during Obama’s presidency. Days later, Trump was inaugurated.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said this past week that he supported the A-29 deal to Nigeria as well as the sale of U.S.-made fighter jets to Bahrain that had been stripped of human rights caveats imposed by the Obama administration.

Under Obama, the U.S. said Bahrain failed to make promised political and human rights reforms after its Sunni-ruled government crushed Arab Spring protests five years ago.

“We need to deal with human rights issues, but not on weapons sales,” Corker said.

The State Department said in a 2016 report that the Nigerian government has taken “few steps to investigate or prosecute officials who committed violations, whether in the security forces or elsewhere in the government, and impunity remained widespread at all levels of government.”

Amnesty International has accused Nigeria’s military of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the extrajudicial killings of an estimated 8,000 Boko Haram suspects. President Muhammadu Buhari promised to investigate the alleged abuses after he won office in March 2015, but no soldier has been prosecuted and thousands of people remain in illegal military detention. Nigeria’s military has denied the allegations.

The A-29 sale would improve the U.S. relationship with Nigeria, Africa’s largest consumer market of 170 million people, the continent’s biggest economy and its second-largest oil producer. Nigeria also is strategically located on the edge of the Sahel, the largely lawless semi-desert region bridging north and sub-Saharan Africa where experts warn Islamic extremists like the Nigeria-based Boko Haram may expand their reach.

The aircraft deal also would satisfy Trump’s priorities to support nations fighting Islamic uprisings, boost U.S. manufacturing and create high-wage jobs at home. The A-29 aircraft, which allow pilots to pinpoint targets at night, are assembled in Jacksonville, Florida.

“It’s hard to argue that any country in Africa is more important than Nigeria for the geopolitical and other strategic interests of the U.S.,” said J. Peter Pham, vice president of the Atlantic Council in Washington and head of its Africa Center.

Once Congress is officially notified of the sale, lawmakers who want to derail it have 30 days to pass veto-proof legislation. That’s a high hurdle given Corker’s support. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also said he backs the sale.

“We’ve really got to try to do what we can to contain them,” McCain said of Boko Haram.

In Trump’s first phone call with Buhari in February, he “assured the Nigerian president of U.S. readiness to cut a new deal in helping Nigeria in terms of military weapons to combat terrorism,” according to Buhari’s office.

A Feb. 15 White House statement that provided a summary of the call said “President Trump expressed support for the sale of aircraft from the United States to support Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram.”

Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in mid-February he was “leery” of the sale because of the Nigerian military’s impunity. Cardin said this week he’s not trying to block the deal.

“Ultimately we hope that the sale goes forward,” he said. “But there is progress that needs to be made in protecting the civilian population.”

Armed groups have carried out a wave of killings in central Mali since January 2017. The killings, by Islamist armed groups, self-defense militias, and, to a lesser extent, government soldiers, have resulted in at least 52 deaths, led to the displacement of over 10,000 people, and dramatically elevated ethnic tensions, like reported by eurasiareview.com. Malian authorities should investigate and prosecute all those responsible.

Islamist armed groups have over the past two years progressively increased their presence in central Mali, where they have executed civilians and government officials and committed other abuses. Their presence, and recruitment of local residents, has inflamed and exploited tensions among the Peuhl, Bambara, and Dogon ethnic groups, spawning the growth of often-abusive self-defense militias.

“Violence since January fueled by explosive ethnic tensions has swept across central Mali, leaving dozens dead,” said Corinne Dufka, associate Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The Malian government should ramp up efforts to stop this violence by vigorously prosecuting the killings and stepping up patrols to protect vulnerable populations.”

During a 10-day research mission to Mali in February, and by phone in late February and March, Human Rights Watch interviewed 57 victims and witnesses to killings and other abuses in central Mali. Human Rights Watch also interviewed members of the ethnic Peuhl and Bambara communities; former detainees; local government, security and justice officials; and foreign diplomats.

On February 11, alleged Peuhl Islamist fighters killed a Bambara shopkeeper near the town of Ke-Macina in Ségou region, 320 kilometers from the capital, Bamako. This sparked retaliatory killings against Peuhl villagers by a Bambara self-defense militia known as the Dozos, leaving at least 21 people dead, including children.

On February 18, armed Islamists executed nine Bozo and Bambara traders returning home from a local market for their perceived support of the Dozos. Since then, at least 16 people – both civilians and armed group members – have been killed in an escalating series of tit-for-tat attacks. Both Peuhl and Bambara villagers told Human Rights Watch that villagers were terrified as large groups of armed men have been seen driving around on motorcycles and vehicles in their villages in central Mali.

Additionally, since January, three local government representatives in Mopti region have been assassinated, allegedly by armed Islamists.

While the Malian security forces have generally acted to quell the ethnic violence, witnesses reported that in response to the growing presence of armed Islamists in central Mali, some soldiers executed at least eight suspected Islamists and forcibly disappeared several others since late December 2016.

Bambara and Peuhl community leaders lamented the violence that has gripped central Mali for the past two years. Villagers, local officials, and elders from both ethnicities said that poverty, public sector corruption, inadequate security, and the lack of investigations and justice for communal violence and criminality were fueling recruitment by armed groups.

A Peuhl youth leader, addressing the lack of justice for the many killings since early 2015, said: “In central Mali, we, the Peuhl, were the jihadists’ first victims… we’ve also lost imams, mayors, and chiefs at the hands of the jihadists, but no one talks about that.” Another said, “So many Peuhl have been tortured, disappeared or killed by the soldiers and by the Dozos, but there is never justice for these terrible crimes.”

A Bambara leader said: “Since 2015, so many of our people have been gunned down in their farms, at home, or on their way to market. We have reported this to local and Bamako authorities, but what we hear are excuses for why they don’t investigate – the rain, the danger, insufficient vehicles. But in the end, there is no justice and the killings keep happening.”

A Peuhl villager said, “To end all this, everyone must be treated with dignity; every killing must be investigated. If not, if the state doesn’t pay attention, people will continue to join the jihadists and their numbers and force will continue to grow.”

The government should investigate and hold to account those responsible for serious abuses committed in central Mali by armed groups, civil defense militias, and state security forces. It should also report on the progress made into its investigation into the May 2016 deadly communal violence near the town of Dioura, in Ségou region.

On March 2, the government announced the establishment of a 45-day commission of inquiry to investigate the violence in Ke-Macina. The commission, consisting of nine magistrates and 22 gendarmes, was given 45 days to submit a report, the government said. If it carries out its mandate credibly and impartially, the commission will be a meaningful step in seeking justice for the victims and their families.

Mortar shells fired into homes in the Somali capital of Mogadishu has killed three people and wounded five, police and ambulance services said on Friday, a day after the government changed heads of security agencies, like reported by  reuters.com.

The mortars landed on Wadajir district. The homes are in the vicinity of Mogadishu airport.

“We have carried three dead women and five others injured, including a woman and children. Mortars landed on their home today,” Abdikadir Abdirahman, the director of Amin ambulance services, told Reuters on Friday.

At least 20 people – mostly women – travelling in a minibus were killed after a roadside bomb exploded in Lower Shabelle in southern Somalia, like reported by ibtimes.co.uk.

Governor Ibrahim Aden Ali of Lower Shabelle termed the incident a “national disaster” and blamed al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab militant group for the blast. However, the group has denied any involvement in the incident.

The explosion occurred just hours after President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed replaced his security chiefs and called on members of the militant group to surrender within 60 days in return for education and jobs, according to Reuters.

The president, who was elected in February, haspromised to protect citizens affected by the militant group. Large parts of Lower Shabelle region were under the control of al-Shabaab and the government has deployed a 22,000-strong African Union force in the region to counter the terrorists, the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, regional security official Nur Abdullahi told the AP that six people were injured in the blast that almost destroyed the vehicle. The incident took place in the evening near Golweyn village. “It’s a horrible incident. Bodies are lying in a pool of blood, and some of them were burnt beyond recognition,” he noted.

Isaq Haji, a nurse at a hospital in Marka town – located 90km south of capital Mogadishu, told the Associated Press that they had received four victims with “horrific” wounds following the roadside blast.

However, denying any role in the blast, al-Shabaab governor for the Lower Shabelle region, Mohamed Abu Usama, told Reuters by phone that their fighters were not at the village where the blast took place. He also claimed that eight people had died in the attack.

“We do not control Golweyn village and its surroundings. It is a battlefield between our mujahideen (jihadist fighters) and the so-called government forces,” he said.

The U.N. peacekeeping chief called the security situation in Mali “alarming”, warning that Islamic extremist groups operating under the al-Qaida banner are carrying out more sophisticated attacks and Islamic State militants are slowly making inroads.

Jean-Pierre Lacroix told the Security Council that “this convergence of threats is particularly alarming” because the government presence is often weak or non-existent.

He said the situation is exacerbated by groups defying state authority in the centre of the country that are killing individuals and closing certain schools, and by criminal networks that are operating very actively in the region.

Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaida took over northern Mali in 2012, exploiting a power vacuum after mutinous soldiers overthrew the president. French-backed forces pushed the extremists from strongholds in 2013, but attacks have continued and progressed south.

Lacroix was critical of the slow progress in implementing a peace deal reached in June 2015 between Mali’s government, Tuareg separatists and armed groups in the north.

Despite advances on some fronts, he said that with elections looming in 2018 “we cannot ignore the major delays sustained and the fragility of the gains that have been made.”

Lacroix said criteria for integrating former combatants haven’t been determined, eight sites for the cantonment of weapons remain empty, and there is no clarity about government institutions which is “leading to splintering on the security and political fronts.”

The United Nations sent a peacekeeping force to Mali in 2013 to help stabilize the country and it has become the most dangerous and deadly of its 16 far-flung missions with at least 114 members killed since it began operations.

Lacroix welcomed the decision by five countries in the Sahel including Mali to set up a regional force.

He said the U.N. peacekeeping mission — which has more than 12,000 troops and police and over 1,300 civilian staffers, with a current budget of $933 million — will step up support to Malian forces and help the government implement defence and security reforms.

Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop told the council the government’s accomplishments “are still fragile” and the country faces many challenges including mobilizing resources to implement the peace agreement and restore authority throughout the country.

Mali also needs funds to provide “the peace dividend” to people affected by the crisis in the country, he said.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley urged the government to do more to implement the peace agreement and immediately focus on extending the authority of the state. She said the Security Council must also do more to address the shortfalls in the peacekeeping mission.

“In far too many parts of Mali, there isn’t a peace for the blue helmets to keep,” Haley said, and “the mission’s equipment is simply not up to standard.”

Haley said in the coming months the U.S. will be reviewing MINUSMA’s mandate to help the mission “play a more effective role.”

Somalia’s new president on Thursday declared the country a war zone and replaced its military and intelligence chiefs while instructing the army to prepare a new offensive against al-Shabab extremists, like reported by ap.org.

The shakeup is an attempt to improve the worsening security situation as the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab steps up deadly bombings in the capital since President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed was elected in February. A car bomb blast on Wednesday at a Mogadishu restaurant killed at least seven people.

The Somali-American president wore a military uniform as he declared the new offensive and offered young extremists a chance to surrender.

“We tell the young, brainwashed al-Shabab fighters that they have a 60-days deadline to lay down the arms with which they use to kill their people and come to us,” Mohamed said. “We shall welcome them with open arms.”

He said the government will focus on the security of the capital first, then the rest of the country.

The changes come roughly a week after the Trump administration approved greater U.S. military authority to pursue al-Shabab in Somalia, including more aggressive airstrikes as parts of southern Somalia will be considered areas of active hostilities.

Thursday’s announcement is seen as an attempt by Mohamed to consolidate power in this long-chaotic horn of Africa nation. He also replaced the country’s police chief and Mogadishu’s mayor.

Al-Shabab has denounced the new president as an “apostate” and warned Somalis against supporting him. The group has been pushed out of the capital and other major urban areas in Somalia by national and African Union multinational forces, but it continues to carry out deadly bombings and attacks in Mogadishu and elsewhere. Targets have included hotels, military checkpoints and the presidential palace.

Somalia’s security forces are under pressure to improve as they will assume responsibility for defending the country once the 22,000-strong AU force leaves by the end of 2020.

Al-Shabab is just one of the challenges facing the new government, which despite hundreds of millions of dollars of support from the international community still struggles to expand its authority beyond the capital and other selected areas.

Drought threatens about half of Somalia’s population of 12 million, the United Nations has said, and hijackings of cargo ships off the country’s coast in recent weeks have signaled a return to piracy on one of the world’s most critical shipping routes. Somalia also is called the world’s most corrupt nation by Transparency International.

Mohamed Ahmed Jimale was named the new chief of defense forces of the Somali National Army, replacing Maj. Gen. Mohamed Adan Ahmed. Abdullahi Mohamed Ali was appointed as the national intelligence agency chief, replacing Abdullahi Mohamud Gafow. Ali has held the position in the past. Gen. Abdihakim Said was appointed as police chief, replacing Gen. Mohamed Sheikh Hassan.

A French soldier was killed in Mali after a clash with armed militants, French President Francois Hollande’s office said on Thursday, highlighting instability in the west African state which is vulnerable to attacks from jihadist groups, like reported by reuters.com.

“The president has learned with great sadness of the death of a (soldier) … following a clash with terrorists during an operation in the southeast of the country,” Hollande’s office said in a statement.

The Sahel region with its huge expanse of remote desert is home to several jihadist groups. The area saw several armed attacks on targets inside neighbouring Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast last year.

France intervened in Mali four years ago to drive out al Qaeda-linked militants who hijacked a rebellion in 2012 by ethnic Tuaregs and attempted to take control of the central government in Bamako.

The former colonial power has since spread some 4,000 soldiers across the region, known as the Barkhane force, to hunt down Islamists, while United Nations’ peacekeepers have also been deployed to ensure Mali’s stability.

France redeployed about 1,000 troops to Mali’s Gao region to tackle renewed violence there after almost 80 people were killed at a military camp in Gao in January. That attack was claimed by al Qaeda’s North African wing which said it wanted to punish groups cooperating with France.

Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the soldier, the 19th to be killed since Paris’ intervention, had died during a joint operation with Burkinabe and Malian forces on Wednesday afternoon near Hombari on Mali’s southwestern border.

He said the troops were attacked after an explosive device blew up an armoured vehicle, with the soldier killed in the ensuing clash.

“The situation in Mali remains unstable,” Le Drian told reporters on Thursday.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, due in Gao on Friday with German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel, is undertaking a two-day trip to the region, as part of a move to boost regional counter-terrorism efforts and find ways for the various parties involved in Mali to stop the violence.

Hundreds of South Sudanese refugees fled into Uganda for a second day on Wednesday, bearing further grim testimony of an attack by government forces on the border town of Pajok in which at least 17 people were killed, according to reuters.com.

Some were shot as they tried to flee. Others had their throats slit before their bodies were strung up from door frames. Two children were run down by a car.

The testimony from the refugees, more than 3,000 of whom have gathered just inside the Ugandan border, offers a glimpse of the brutality of a three-year civil war ripping apart the world’s youngest nation.

The government denies its Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) forces target civilians and said Monday’s operation in Pajok, a town of more than 10,000 people 15 km (10 miles) north of the Ugandan border, was to flush out rebel guerrillas.

Reports that its soldiers had killed residents were untrue, SPLA deputy spokesman Colonel Santo Domic Chol said. His troops had orders to refrain from entering and taking over Pajok, he said.

“This is not true. It is just a manufactured campaign against the SPLA. Some people are not happy, because the SPLA flushed out bandits and rebels who have been controlling Pajok for the last two years,” he told Reuters by phone.

“What I know is that the bandits are looting and killing the population in Pajok, starting on Friday, Saturday.”

South Sudan, which split away from Sudan in 2011 after decades of conflict, has been mired in civil war since President Salva Kiir sacked his vice president Riek Machar in 2013.

Password Okot, 30, a farmer, told how he lost two brothers.

Having fled the initial fighting, he crept back to his home in Ywayaa village on Pajok’s outskirts to collect his belongings. There he saw government soldiers grab his brother, 35-year-old mechanic Ayela Peter, from a crowd, tie his ankles, slit his throat and sling up his body in a doorway.

“When they saw them slaughtering my brother, people scattered and started running. When they were running, they shot my other brother,” Okot said at the Ngoromoro border crossing.

The fighting has caused the biggest refugee exodus in Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the United Nations said in December it had evidence of ethnic cleansing by both government forces and rebels, with soldiers showing callous disregard for civilian life.

Two refugees spoke of the SPLA troops overrunning Pajok’s hospital and killing a medical worker.

Omal Koloro, 52, a businessman, said the medic was a doctor called Aloka who had tried to prevent SPLA soldiers from entering the compound. Four others at the hospital were also killed, Koloro said.

In another incident, he said children were targeted as they ran across a bridge at the first outbreak of gunfire. “Two were run over and two they just shot,” he said.

The Pajok assault is the latest in a string of attacks in the fertile Equatoria region that is emptying towns and villages near the border with Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.

More than 1.5 million people have fled in the last nine months, nearly two thirds of them to Uganda, which is struggling to cope.

The Ugandan government and United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) are scrambling to complete a half-built refugee settlement near Ngomoromo for the latest arrivals, who are living in the bush at the Ugandan border.

“We’re trying to work out the best place for them to be accommodated,” UNHCR spokesman Alvin Gonzaga said. “We’re trying to ready the site but we need the signature of the land owners.”

Even when they reach the relative safety of a settlement camp, many refugees face an agonizing wait for loved ones who went missing in the panic two days ago.

The phone signal to Pajok has been cut.

“My mother is still there,” Okot said. “We don’t know whether she’s alive or dead.”