The Kenyan army says it has taken a town in southern Somalia from militant group al-Shabab in a joint operation with Somali government forces.

In messages posted Wednesday to the social media site Twitter, army spokesman Emmanuel Chirchir says the town of Fafadun was seized in an operation that killed three al-Shabab members.

Chirchir says the dead include a key al-Shabab leader in the Gedo region, Sheikh Hassan Hussein. He says one Kenyan soldier was slightly injured.

While piracy attacks off the coast of unstable Somalia have garnered lots of attention in recent years, maritime security experts say it is on Africa’s western coast, in the oil rich Gulf of Guinea, where piracy attacks are currently on the rise.

Militants hidden behind bandanas from Nigeria’s Niger Delta oil region fire machine guns into the water from a speeding boat during a recent show of force staged for media.

Their usual attacks range from stealing oil to kidnapping offshore oil workers for ransom.

A police surgeon who testified against Pakistani security forces is dead, gunned down by unknown assailants.

Police officials say Baqir Shah was shot and killed Thursday in Quetta. He had conducted autopsies on foreigners who had been killed by police.

Shah had been severely beaten and complained of constant death threats after he ruled Pakistani forces shot and killed a group of five men and women from Russia and Tajikistan earlier this year.

Turkey's military says it carried out airstrikes against suspected Kurdish rebels near the Iraq border but did not confirm reports from local officials that at least 23 civilians were killed in the attack.

Officials in Sirnak province said the victims were likely smuggling items into Turkey from northern Iraq and may have been mistaken for Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels.

A Turkish military statement said a group of PKK rebels was identified in the area.

The Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, met with President Goodluck Jonathan at the State House in Abuja late Wednesday to express concern after the Christmas Day church bombings by Boko Haram. The president of CAN criticized the government’s security response to Boko Haram and suggested that Christians may have to defend themselves from Muslim militants.

At a news conference after their meeting about the Christmas Day terror attacks, which left at least 39 dead, the president of CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, had some harsh words for Jonathan, himself a Christian.

Organizers of the Volvo Ocean Race are shipping five sailboats through the Indian Ocean on an armed transport vessel due to piracy concerns.

The 15-ton yachts with 31-meter masts were loaded onto a ship Wednesday at an undisclosed location before leaving on a journey to Sharjah off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.

Organizers of the around-the-world race say they decided not to allow the event to sail parts of the Indian Ocean due to increased threats by pirates.

Three more loading-unloading operations will have to be completed at other stages of the event.

Police in southern Nigeria say assailants have thrown a bomb into an Arabic school, wounding seven people days after a string of deadly church bombings across the country.

Authorities in Delta state say the homemade bomb went off after it was thrown from a car late Tuesday. Six children were among the wounded.

The attack follows a string of four coordinated bombings Sunday that killed at least 39 people.

The radical Muslim sect Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attacks.

Pirates have hijacked an Italian cargo ship with 18 crew members off the coast of Oman.

The Naples-based ship owner, Marnarvi, says pirates boarded and seized the ship Enrico Ievoli early Tuesday morning in the Arabian Sea.

The company said the crew included six Italians, five Ukrainians and seven Indians. The vessel was carrying nearly 16,000-tons of caustic soda and set sail from the United Arab Emirates bound for the Arabian Sea.

The Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said he was following the hijacking closely.

The Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram has again demonstrated its capacity to inflict fear and terror on the people of Nigeria, with a series of bomb attacks that killed at least 39 people this past weekend. Analysts suspect the group also is working with other terrorist organizations in Africa, but it is not clear to what degree.

Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sinful,” has developed its own distinct brand of terror in Nigeria by carrying out acts of violence in crowds, seeking to inflict as much bloodshed and damage as possible.