Mogadishu, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- Somalia's military chief escaped an assassination attempt Thursday after a roadside bomb explosion against his vehicle left at least one of his bodyguards dead and five others wounded, the police said.

Mohamed Gele Kahiye, the newly appointed army chief, was not in his vehicle when the remotely controlled bombs ripped through it as it passed along a main road in government controlled part of Mogadishu.

"Fortunately the commander was not in the vehicle when the explosion occurred. One of his bodyguards was killed and five others were also wounded in the incident," Abdulahi Hassan Barise, spokesman for the Somali police told Xinhua.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the latest attack on the Somali army chief, but Islamist rebels opposed to the government often carry out pre-emptive attacks on senior security and political officials of the government whenever the government is preparing for a major offensive.

The Somali government has lately been restructuring its security forces, many of whom have recently received training aboard while top security officials were changed as the government says its is preparing for a major assault to retake the capital city, Mogadishu.

Islamist groups have also been making their own preparations and paraded hundreds of newly trained fighters and armory in their bases in Mogadishu.

The Islamist rebels, who control much of the capital as well as all of south and center of Somalia, have also made huge trenches in the middle of major streets in Mogadishu between areas under the insurgents' control and that of the government.

War of words have been escalating between the two sides in recent days causing the few remaining families in frontline areas in Mogadishu to begin fleeing their homes in fear they may get trapped when fighting breaks.

MOGADISHU, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- At least 20 people were killed and more than 40 others wounded on Thursday after exchanges of heavy shelling between Islamist rebels and African Union peacekeeping forces in the Somali capital Mogadishu, witnesses and emergency officials said.

Emergency officials in Mogadishu said that 20 people, mostly civilians, died when the African union peacekeeping forces backing the Somali government troops retaliated to insurgent mortars in the north of the city.

Local ambulance services said that almost 40 people were injured as the shells showered over residential areas in the insurgent-held north of the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Witnesses said that shells also hit a number of other areas in the south of the restive coastal capital.

The duel came as a roadside bomb explosion targeting Somali army chief earlier killed at least one of the army commander's bodyguard and wounded five others but the newly-appointed army head, Mohamed Gele Kahiye, narrowly escaped as he was not in his vehicle at the time.

Both Somali government and hard-line Islamist insurgents have been preparing for a possible major confrontation over the control of Mogadishu, the Somalia capital which is partly controlled by the two sides.

The Somali government has lately been restructuring its security forces many of whom have recently received training aboard while top security officials were changed as the Somali government says it is preparing for a major assault to retake the capital city.

Islamist groups have also been making their own preparations and paraded hundreds of newly trained fighters and armory in their bases in Mogadishu.

The Islamist rebels, who control much of the capital as well as all of south and center of Somalia, have also made huge trenches in the middle of major streets in Mogadishu between areas under the insurgents' control and that of the government.

War of words have been escalating between the two sides in recent days causing the few remaining families in frontline areas in Mogadishu to begin fleeing their homes in fear they may get trapped when fighting breaks.

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- An animal rights watch has accused the South African government of routinely releasing unreliable information on wildlife, making it difficult to monitor conservation practices, according to the South African Press Association (SAPA).

Animal Rights Africa (ARA) told SAPA on Wednesday that statistics supplied on the country's elephant and rhino populations varied so wildly that they were plainly not trustworthy.

In a 20-page report, the group said that in July last year the government department of environmental affairs claimed there were 45 elephants in captivity in South Africa.

"This is approximately one-third of the real figure," ARA said, pointing out that the former minister of environmental affairs, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, had consistently stated over a number of years that there were 120 elephants in captivity in the country.

In June, the department told Parliament in writing that the Kruger National Park's elephant population -- a subject of considerable debate -- totaled 17,300.

This was at odds with "an authoritative" study by 60 scientists that put the park's elephant population at 12,427 at the end of 2006.

"The figure of 17,300 given to Parliament in June 2009 implies a 39 percent increase in under three years. South African National Parks are on record as saying they believe the elephant population is growing at the rate of six to seven percent per annum."

ARA said major anomalies on a much-watched species cast doubt on figures supplied on other animals.

"That such a serious mistake is made with one of the most in tensely examined animal species in the country draws into question data supplied on lesser known species."

Figures provided in recent years on the number of rhino in the country were equally contradictory and could have serious implications on the calculation of hunting quotas, the group said.

The number of white rhino was alternately put at 7,000 and 9,000.

NAIROBI, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- Ten aid agencies warned on Thursday a deadly conflict could return to southern Sudan unless there is urgent international action to save the peace agreement that ended one of Africa's longest and deadliest wars.

In a new report "Rescuing the Peace in Southern Sudan" released in Nairobi on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the signing of the peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the agencies said a lethal cocktail of rising violence, chronic poverty and political tensions has left the peace deal on the brink of collapse.

"It is not yet too late to avert disaster, but the next 12 months are a crossroads for Africa's largest country," said co-author of the report Maya Mailer, policy advisor for Oxfam.

"Last year saw a surge in violence in southern Sudan. This could escalate even further and become one of the biggest emergencies in Africa in 2010."

The agencies also warned that growing frustration over the lack of development in southern Sudan is harming the chances of peace.

Less than half the population has access to clean water and maternal mortality rates are among the worst in the world.

There are fewer than 50 km of tarmac road in the entire region, an area the size of France, and during heavy rains many areas are cut off for months at a time, making the delivery of humanitarian aid almost impossible.

Some 80 percent of adults cannot read or write and one in seven children die before their fifth birthday.

"After five years of peace, southern Sudan remains one of the poorest regions on earth. People hoped the peace would bring economic benefits and development, but this has happened far too slowly and in some areas not at all," Francisco Roque, country director of Save the Children in South Sudan.

"We are very worried about children who seem to be increasingly targeted in attacks on villages. International donors and the government must urgently improve aid to these areas."

According to the agencies, some 2,500 people were killed and 350,000 fled their homes last year, a human toll greater than in Darfur last year.

The aid agencies -- Christian Aid, Cordaid, Handicap International, ICCO, International Rescue Committee, Oxfam International, Save the Children Sudan, Caritas France/ Secours Catholique, TearFund and World Vision -- said the rest of the world has largely overlooked this suffering.

Communities say that women and children have increasingly been targeted in attacks on villages and the government of southern Sudan and international peacekeepers have not been able to protect them.

The report says the next 12 months will see a number of potential flashpoints that could inflame violence if not properly prepared for.

These include Sudan's first multi-party elections in 24 years and a referendum in which southerners will vote on whether to remain united with the north or to secede and become independent.

To safeguard civilians at this fragile juncture, the agencies urged the UN Security Council to ensure that protecting civilians becomes a core priority for the UN peacekeeping force, UNMIS.

The agencies also called on the international community to help mediate between the northern and southern parties before the elections and referendum, to reduce the likelihood of conflict, and to support the government in the south to provide security.

International Director of Christian Aid Paul Valentin warned that a return to conflict would have devastating consequences that extend far beyond southern Sudan, the agencies said.

"Sustained diplomatic engagement from the international community, including Sudan's neighbors, is what is needed. This helped achieve what many thought was impossible and secure the peace agreement in the first place," Valentin said.

"Now engagement is needed again to ensure all that effort does not go to waste. A return to war is by no means inevitable, but it depends whether the world heeds the warning signs of the past year and has the political will to save the peace," he said.

The civil war was responsible for the deaths of two million people and forced around four million people to flee their homes, most into neighboring countries.

The war destabilized the entire region, fuelling conflicts and suffering across central and eastern Africa.

The crisis in southern Sudan is escalating at a time when the situation in Darfur, in western Sudan, remains one of the world's biggest humanitarian emergencies.

The agencies warned that there cannot be sustainable peace in Darfur if the peace between north and south is allowed to fail.

The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed on Jan. 9, 2005, ending a war between northern and southern Sudan that cost two million lives.

CAIRO, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- Egypt security officials said on Thursday that a drive-by shooting killed at least 6 people leaving Coptic Christmas Mass in southern part of the country.

The attack took place in early morning in the town of Nag Hamady, some 60 km from Luxor, the biggest city in the underdeveloped south of the country.

A report on the local website of Masrawy said seven Coptic Christians, one Muslim were killed and 21 others were injured, including five in critical conditions, said

The Copts were reported leaving a church after the Christmas eve service when a car pulled up in front of the building and opened fire. Several Muslims passing the church were also injured, security sources said.

Christians, mostly Coptic, account for about 10 percent of Egypt's predominantly Muslim population.

Religious disputes between the Christians and Muslims erupted occasionally in southern Egypt, and Christians have increasingly complained about discrimination by the Muslim majority.

MOGADISHU, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Somalia's hard-line Islamist Al Shabaab movement dismissed the decision by the UN's food agency to suspend its operation in southern Somalia over insecurity as "lies and propaganda."

The UN World Food Program (WFP) said Tuesday it was forced to suspend its operations in southern Somalia due to rising insecurity.

"The WFP said that it was suspending its operation in south Somalia because of insecurity that is lies and propaganda. The area controlled by Al Shabaab movement is one of the most peaceful areas in Somalia ," Ali Mohamoud Rage, spokesman for the Al Shabaab movement which controls southern Somalia, told reporters in Mogadishu.

WFP said in a statement that rising threats and attacks on humanitarian operations, as well as the imposition of a string of unacceptable demands from armed groups, have made it virtually impossible to continue reaching up to one million people in need in southern Somalia.

The Al Shabaab spokesman said they did not order the UN agency to leave, nor did they impose any restrictions on it. The movement only asked the WFP to buy grains from local farmers to give out to needy, he added.

"We have not ordered WFP to leave the country but we have only asked them to buy local people's produce to give outs as food aid, if it ever gives anything, so that our farmers become more productive which is in the interest of the farmers and the Somali Muslim people as a whole," the spokesman said.

The Islamist group, which controls much of southern and central Somalia, expelled a number of UN agencies from areas under their control. They also forcibly distributed food aid in WFP warehouses in the southern Somali town of Merka last month.

The Islamist group's spokesman said the movement considers the name of the UN agency to be against the teaching of Islam.

"First of all we tell the people that the name of World Food Program is against the Islamic doctrine because Islam believes that the program of feeding the world is for Allah only and it is He who feeds every living being on earth and no human being can do that."

The UN agency said its offices in Wajid, Buale, Garbahare, Afmadow, Jilib and Belet Weyne in southern Somalia are temporarily closed, and that food supplies and equipment have been moved, along with staff, to safer areas in order to ensure that food assistance continues to reach as many vulnerable people as possible.

He accused the agency of favoring American farmers over Somali farmers by refusing to buy grains from local farmers, but WFP saidlocal production in the last five years averaged only about 30 percent of food needs in the Horn of Africa nation, which has beenwithout an effective central government for more than two decades.

The Al Shabaab spokesman accused the UN agency of trying to bribe the group's officials, who he said have refused to accept it.

"The WFP claimed that it is asked for extortion money but it is known of the infidels and their followers such as the WFP that they buy people who do not subscribe to their ideology but we refused that and did not accept to let it continue to cause hardships to the people."

Al Shabaab, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, has been waging deadly insurgency against the internationally recognized Somali government for the past three years.

The group wants to establish an Islamic state in Somalia and impose stricter version of the Islamic law, or the Sharia, which it already implements in areas under its control in south-central Somalia.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is retooling its global multibillion-dollar fight against HIV/AIDS to transform healthcare in some of the world's poorest countries, the U.S. AIDS chief said on Tuesday.

Eric Goosby, who President Barack Obama named last year to take over the Bush administration's signature foreign aid initiative, said U.S. AIDS relief efforts must change to face a broader health crisis stretching decades into the future.

"We've created a very good start at what was an emergency response. We now need to move that emergency response into a sustained response," Goosby said in an interview.

"It's a harder lift, it's not as flashy, it's not as rapid in our ability to deploy and put in place. But it is more durable."

Former President George W. Bush launched the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, pledging an initial $15 billion to fight AIDS around the world.

In 2008, the Democratic-controlled Congress authorized an additional $48 billion to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and PEPFAR now operates in some 87 countries around the world, most of them in Africa but also including China and Russia.

Goosby, who has launched a new five-year strategy for PEPFAR, said it was time to address underlying healthcare problems in AIDS-hit countries -- a huge expansion of program goals -- even though the immediate crisis was far from over.

"We are still responding to an emergency in no uncertain terms. It is still killing millions of people," Goosby said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Tuesday said it had revoked the visa it had given a Nigerian man after his alleged attempt to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day with explosives hidden in his underwear.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday said U.S. intelligence agencies had enough information about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to have discovered and possibly disrupted the plan to destroy the Detroit-bound airline but "failed to connect those dots."

Obama said the intelligence community knew Abdulmutallab had traveled to Yemen and established contact with extremists. The CIA has said it first learned of Abdulmutallab on November 19, when his father visited the U.S. embassy in Abuja and sought help finding him.

Critics have questioned why the U.S. goverment did not put the pieces together and revoke his visa before Christmas.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Abdulmutallab was stripped of his visa after the attempted attack, as were an unspecified number of others suspected of links to terrorism.

"It's more than one," Crowley told reporters at his daily briefing. "I don't think it's fruitful to get into a scoreboard about ... how many people have we found today that we think have links to terrorism."

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. and French diplomats have met members of Guinea's ruling junta in Morocco in hopes of speeding a return to democracy in the troubled West African nation, the U.S. State Department said on Monday.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson and his French counterpart met in Morocco with a group led by Defence Minister Sekouba Konate, who assumed interim control over Guinea after military ruler Moussa Dadis Camara was severely wounded in a failed assassination bid on December 3.

Camara remains hospitalized in Morocco and his health status is uncertain.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the meeting conveyed "our ideas on how to seek a peaceful resolution to the political situation in Guinea," including moving toward a civilian-led transitional government and eventual free and fair elections.

Asked if progress was more likely if Camara remained outside the country, Crowley answered, "Yes."

Another U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting in Rabat made progress.

U.S. officials say Konate may be amenable to moves to resolve the crisis in Guinea, the world's largest producer of aluminum ore bauxite and considered a linchpin of stability in a region recovering from three civil wars.

Camara took power in a bloodless coup in December 2008. He drew broad international condemnation and sanctions after gunmen killed and raped scores of people protesting against his rule on September 28.

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CAIRO (Reuters) - Two 2,500-year-old tombs discovered at a necropolis near Cairo promise to reveal more about ancient Egypt's middle class, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Tuesday.

Dating from the 26th dynasty, which ruled Egypt from about 664 BC to 525 BC, the tombs were found near the entrance to the archaeological site at the Saqqara burial ground, 30 km (20 miles) south of Cairo.

"These tombs belonged to middle class Egyptian families, not royalty, and had no names on them. They were reused by many people and can give us lots of information on burial customs and religion at the time," Zahi Hawass, Egypt's head of antiquities who led the all-Egyptian archaeological team, told Reuters.

One tomb, the largest discovered to date in Saqqara, consists of a complex of rooms and corridors linked to a large hall hewn into the rock.

"We were not expecting to discover any tombs in this area," Hawass said. "These discoveries prove that the importance of Saqqara extends beyond the Old Kingdom of the 3rd to the 6th dynasty and can tell us so much about the 26th dynasty".

Likely looted at the end of the Roman period, the tombs have been opened several times but nonetheless still contain a number of coffins, human remains, mummified animals such as eagles, and clay pottery.

Finding unlooted chambers in such a well-known burial centre as Saqqara, which served the nearby city of Memphis, is rare.

"Saqqara has many secrets still," Hawass said.

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ABUJA (Reuters) - A Nigerian federal court will hold hearings next week on three lawsuits against the government which accuse an ailing president of breaching the constitution by staying in power after weeks in hospital overseas.

The Nigerian Bar Association, a leading human rights lawyer, and two former lawmakers have taken legal action in hopes a federal court will force President Umaru Yar'Adua to transfer powers to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan.

Judge Dan Abutu on Tuesday scheduled a January 14 hearing for the three cases at a federal court in Nigeria's capital Abuja.

The president has been absent from Africa's most populous country for more than a month receiving treatment for a heart condition in Saudi Arabia, but there have been few updates on his health.

Political analysts and senior lawyers say affairs of state are already being affected in sub-Saharan Africa's second biggest economy, pushing Nigeria to the brink of a constitutional crisis.

"We cannot see him (Yar'Adua), we don't know where he is and don't even know what he is doing," NBA President Rotimi Akeredolu told Reuters.

"All we are asking is that the vice president be sworn-in as acting president."

Nigeria's constitution states the president should write to the heads of the two chambers of parliament if he is leaving on holiday or otherwise unable to govern, and that the vice president should take over until he writes to the contrary.

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ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria urged the United States on Tuesday to reconsider its decision to require tighter security for Nigerian air travellers in the wake of the botched bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner.

Its foreign minister, in a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Africa's most populous nation, called the tougher measures "an unacceptable New Year's gift".

Since Monday, passengers flying from Nigeria to the United States must undergo the same checks as people from Iran, Afghanistan and Cuba.

The procedures follow the Christmas Day bombing attempt on a U.S. airliner blamed on Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who U.S. officials believe was trained by al Qaeda in Yemen.

"Listing Nigeria on the second tier of countries for security measures in the U.S. is an unacceptable New Year's gift," Foreign Affairs Minister Ojo Maduekwe told reporters after meeting with U.S. ambassador Robin Sanders.

"We told her that we want the U.S. government to look at this again."

The U.S. list includes passengers travelling from or through nations listed as "state sponsors of terrorism" -- Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria -- as well as Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

Nigeria, which has launched a rebranding campaign to shed its image for corruption, said Abdulmutallab's behaviour should not be a yardstick for judging the country's 140 million residents.

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BOSASSO, Somalia (Reuters) - An unidentified gunman killed a member of the local parliament in Puntland on Tuesday, witnesses said, the latest political murder to rock Somalia's semi-autonomous northern region.

Witness Hussein Osman said legislator Abdullahi Ali was gunned down by a man armed with a pistol outside a mosque in Bosasso port.

"I saw the man stand beside the MP, then the MP fell down as he was shot. We ran away from the scene. Now the police are there and we can hear deafening gunfire, but we don't know who is fighting the police," he told Reuters by telephone.

Puntland has been relatively stable compared with the rest of Somalia. But violence and insecurity have risen in recent months and the region is also a major base for pirates who have been causing havoc to shipping off the Horn of Africa.

Experts say Puntland is also home to organised criminals, including money counterfeiters and human traffickers. In November, unidentified gunmen shot dead a judge who had jailed pirates and members of a hardline rebel group. A local member of parliament was killed in a separate attack.

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KINSHASA (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo sacked 119 high-ranking civil servants on Tuesday as part of a presidential drive to clean up the often corrupt and chaotic government agencies in the central African country.

President Jospeh Kabila, who is struggling with an economy burdened by external debt and in need of more income from the mining projects that form its backbone, signed a decree removing the disgraced employees from the finance and budget ministries.

"Each of the agents concerned has either committed faults that constitute serious breaches of the honour, dignity and duties attached to their position ... or has been sentenced to a confirmed prison sentence longer than three months at least once," said the decree, signed on January 2 and enacted on Tuesday.

A further 2,500 civil servants, mainly from the tax and customs offices, were forced to retire though they were not accused of wrongdoing.

Many Congolese government workers stay in their jobs past retirement age to keep their salaries, rather than rely on uncertain or non-existent pensions.

Several branches of the tax and customs administrations were on strike for most of December, paralysing many import-export businesses.

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JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) - Seventeen people were killed on Thursday when armed civilians ambushed south Sudanese soldiers trying to disarm tribes following heavy fighting in the semi-autonomous region last year, an official said on Tuesday.

A 2005 peace deal ended more than two decades of north-south civil war, but the south Sudan army has found it difficult to disarm civilians in the lawless south and tribal violence claimed an estimated 2,500 lives in the south last year.

"The soldiers clashed with armed civilians, 13 were killed from the soldiers' side and four from the civilians," Lakes State Deputy Governor David Noc Marial told Reuters. The civilians' refusal to disarm was behind the ambush, he said.

Five people were killed in clashes between troops and armed civilians earlier last week, Marial said, after a young man who refused to give up his gun was shot dead. "The civilian was killed on the spot ... the relatives ran after the soldiers."

The International Crisis Group think tank put the number of people killed in cattle raids and revenge attacks last year at about 2,500, many of them women and children.

The violence, mostly in Jonglei which borders the Lakes State, led to renewed calls for the disarmament of communities bristling with guns accumulated during the north-south war.

Analysts worry that a security vacuum in rural areas could lead to more intense violence ahead of elections in April and a southern vote on secession in 2011.

Marial said that disarmament in the Lakes State had been temporarily halted. "We've taken the soldiers to one side and evacuated them until there is peace in the area," he said.

Some 2 million people were killed in the north-south war, fought over differing religious, political and ethnic identities and ideology, inflamed by the discovery of oil in the south. An additional 4 million were forced to flee their homes.

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ARISH, Egypt (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces clashed on Wednesday with members of a convoy led by left-wing British politician George Galloway trying to take relief supplies to Palestinians in the Gaza strip.

A Reuters correspondent in the port city of Arish, 40 km (25 miles) from Egypt's border with Gaza, saw security forces throwing stones at about 520 people travelling with the convoy.

The convoy has been locked in a dispute with Egyptian authorities over the route of the 198 trucks.

Police used water cannon to force the protesters to leave Arish harbour, which they had occupied, a security source said. Around 40 members of the convoy had minor injuries while around 15 police officials were hurt, witnesses said.

Egypt's Interior Ministry said protesters had broken a gate into the port complex, while others scaled its walls.

Some of the protesters "lit cardboard boxes and prevented firemen from reaching them and moved cars from the convoy to block the port gate", the ministry said in a statement published by Egypt's official news agency MENA.

The activists struck a deal with police to trade four police officers who had been held by the protesters for a few hours in exchange for seven members of the convoy detained by police.

Cairo insists the food and other supplies should go to Gaza via an Israeli-controlled checkpoint while the convoy's leaders want to use the Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing.

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RAFAH, Egypt (Reuters) - An Egyptian soldier was shot dead during a violent protest at the Egypt-Gaza border on Wednesday, an Egyptian security source said.

The source said the 21-year-old was shot by gunfire from the Palestinian side of the border at Rafah.

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MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Renewed fears over the Somali al Shabaab group's links with Yemen and an attack on the home of a Danish cartoonist by an axe-wielding man with reported ties to the insurgents have turned a spotlight on the Islamist group.

Here are some questions and answers about the hardline guerrillas and their international reach:

WHY DO WE CARE NOW?

Western security agencies have long said Somalia is a safe haven for foreign militants plotting attacks across the region and beyond. But until recently the focus has mostly been on preventing Somalis abroad becoming radicalised then returning to join the rebels and fight the U.N.-backed government.

There have been several cases of this, including reportedly the suicide bombers who struck a university graduation ceremony in Mogadishu on December 3, and last September at the heart of the African Union's (AU) main military base in the capital.

Somali officials said the bomber who killed 22 people, including three government ministers, at the graduation was a 26-year-old Danish citizen of Somali descent. One of the AU base bombers was reportedly from Seattle, while about 20 young men are also said to have disappeared from Minneapolis's large Somali community in the last two years to join al Shabaab.

Experts say such individuals are more willing and motivated than native Somalis to stage suicide attacks -- perhaps because of their experiences of living in the West and the problems that may have caused them in terms of their own identity.

But al Shabaab's external reach has been highlighted after Friday's attack on cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in Copenhagen -- as well as its pledge to support Yemeni insurgents linked to al Qaeda who are believed to be behind the foiled Christmas Day bombing of a commercial airliner over Detroit.

WHAT IS AL SHABAAB'S RECORD?

The rebels have threatened in the past to launch attacks in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, as well in Uganda and Burundi, which both sent troops for the AU's peacekeeping mission AMISOM.

But they have so far failed to follow through. Experts believe some al Shabaab financiers have large amounts of funds in real estate in Kenya's capital Nairobi -- meaning they would not want to see any attacks that put their investment at risk. Some analysts suggest the absence of any strikes in Kampala or Bujumbura suggests much of the rebels' rhetoric maybe just that.

That has not stopped concerns being stoked further afield, however. Last August, police in Australia said they had foiled a suicide attack on an army base there by four men with al Shabaab links in that country's biggest terrorism case.

Then Danish police said the 28-year-old who broke into Westergaard's house had links to al Shabaab and al Qaeda and that the attempted killing was "terror related".

The group's ties to Yemen have also come under close scrutiny given Washington's renewed security focus on the Arab world's poorest nation following the foiled December 25 attack.

Regional analysts say there has long been a degree of cooperation between people-trafficking gangs and other organised criminals on both sides of the Gulf of Aden, but that the extent of any other links remains unclear.

On Saturday, Somalia's defence minister told Reuters that al Qaeda insurgents in Yemen had sent two boat loads of weaponry to al Shabaab fighters in the rebel-held southern port of Kismayu in recent days, but gave few other details.

WHAT ARE AL SHABAAB SAYING?

Veteran al Shabaab commanders declined to speak to Reuters on the record about the group's global connections, but a senior rebel official who agreed to talk on condition of anonymity said they received help from many individuals in Islamic nations who supported their struggle to impose sharia law across Somalia.

The official said jihadists from across the Muslim world had joined them, including high profile al Qaeda suspects like Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 Kenya and Tanzania U.S. embassy bombings that killed 240 people.

Asked about a report that Fazul, a Comorian in his late 30s with a $5 million reward on his head, was now leading the group, the official said he would not answer because he was protecting his fellow mujahideen from the Western nations hunting him.

Most Somalis said they believed Ahmed Abdi Godane remained al Shabaab's leader. He has not been seen in public for months, but sends audio recordings to local media. He is believed to be in close contact with the senior foreign members of al Shabaab.

No one knows for sure, but experts say a reasonable estimate of al Shabaab's total manpower is no more than 5,000, with perhaps 500-plus foreigners. A regional analyst said Yemenis made up a significant portion of the foreign element.

Other foreigners in al Shabaab's ranks reportedly include white Americans and Europeans, Kenyans, Sudanese, Indian Ocean islanders, Pakistanis and Algerians.

20100106

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The three wives of South African President Jacob Zuma will not vie for the position of "First Lady" because the constitution makes no provision for the title, his office said on Wednesday.

South Africa's media has speculated on which spouse might assume the role after Zuma married for the fifth time on Monday, giving the Zulu traditionalist his third current wife.

"The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (does) not make provision for a First Lady or First Ladies, and there is no such official designation," the presidency said in a statement.

"The president will be accompanied by any of the spouses to official or public engagements, or all of them at the same time should he so decide. This is his prerogative."

Multiple marriages are allowed in South Africa and form part of Zulu culture but the practice has drawn criticism from HIV/AIDS activists in a country with one of the highest infection rates in the world.

Zuma, who was previously also married to Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma before their divorce in 1998, while another wife committed suicide in 2000, has repeatedly defended his decision to take many wives.

He has 19 children, according to his official biography on the presidency website, and is also engaged to at least one other woman.

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KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan will hold its first multi-party elections in 24 years in April. But already there are complaints about fraud, irregularities and obstacles to opposition parties taking part.

Here are some possible scenarios in the run up to the elections.

BOYCOTT

A group of more than 20 political parties said they would boycott the elections if a package of democratic laws was not passed. All the laws were passed in parliament in December.

But the law governing granting the intelligence services wide powers to arrest and search was only forced through by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's dominant National Congress Party (NCP) in the teeth of fierce opposition.

While concerns remain over that law and a stringent media bill, the parties are however likely to participate in the elections and many have already announced their presidential candidates.

ALLIANCES

About 20 political parties who formed a joint position in south Sudan's capital Juba last year have said they may field joint candidates for the parliamentary and state governor elections.

The NCP has expressed concern at an opposition alliance against their candidates. For smaller parties like the Communist Party an alliance would be an advantage. But the Umma Party, which historically has been one of Sudan's largest political parties, wants a bigger share of seats, its members say.