Somali government forces supported by African Union peacekeepers and tanks on Tuesday took control of a key Islamist rebel base just to the north of the capital, officials and witnesses said.

The allied forces entered the town of Balad, 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Mogadishu at around midday with no resistance from the al-Qaida affiliated Shebab rebels.

A United Nations worker found guilty of participating in a terrorist group in Ethiopia was Friday sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison.

Abdurahman Sheikh Hassan, an Ethiopian, was found guilty of "participating in a terrorist organization" earlier this week over alleged links to the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), an outlawed secessionist rebel group.

A South African couple seized by pirates in the Indian Ocean and held for 18 months in Somalia was freed overnight, with relatives saying a ransom was paid while authorities spoke only of a raid by security forces.

Family members said they had paid money for the release of Debbie Calitz and Bruno Pelizzari but Somalia's Defense Minister Hussein Arab Isse insisted the two were freed in a rescue operation that lasted throughout the night.

A suicide bomber attacked a military base housing African Union soldiers and Somali troops on Saturday about 30 kilometers from the capital Mogadishu, a Somali military official told Agence France Presse.

"There was a suicide attack on a military camp in Afgoye, where we are getting initial reports that a car laden with explosives was detonated near Bar Osmail military base, but we have no details so far," Abdukadir Mohamed said.

A German national of Turkish origin wanted by Kenya for suspected links to Somalia's Islamist rebel group Shebab has been arrested in Tanzania, police in both countries said Wednesday.

"Yes, we have arrested him. He is now in Dar es Salaam where we are interrogating him," a senior Tanzanian police officer said, asking not to be identified.

Kenyan troops were officially integrated into the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM), with Kenya's defense minister signing an agreement at AU headquarters Saturday.

"We conclude the process of establishing a formal, legal framework for the integration of the Kenyan defense forces into AMISOM," Minister of Defense Yusuf Haji said at the signing in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

Somalia needs a global reconstruction effort to back up ongoing stabilization efforts and stop the Horn of Africa's 20-year descent into chaos, leaders said Thursday at the start of a meeting in Turkey.

Representatives from 54 countries gathered in Istanbul to find a path towards a better future for a country that was the reason the term "failed state" was coined two decades ago.

At least six people, including three civilians, were killed Wednesday in northern Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region when a roadside bomb exploded as security forces tried to defuse it.

"Three members of the security forces and three civilians were killed in the explosion," said security official Mahdi Abdulahi.

Somalia's president escaped an ambush unharmed Tuesday as al-Qaida-linked Shebab fighters attacked his armored convoy in territory recently wrested from the extremists, officials said.

Two Somali soldiers were wounded when Shebab gunmen opened fire as President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed drove down the Afgoye corridor -- a key road and the world's largest concentration of displaced people -- for the first time since its capture on Friday.

U.S. President Barack Obama has personally overseen a top-secret process for determining which al-Qaida suspects should be placed on a "kill list," the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Times, citing dozens of top officials and former advisers, said the administration had developed what it termed the "kill list" as part of a stepped-up drone war against al-Qaida and its affiliates in Pakistan and Yemen.