Updated at 12:50 p.m. ET
As President Obama was in Kenya to discuss the threat from Islamist extremists, in neighboring Somalia at least 10 people were killed in a suicide car bomb by militants of al-Shabab – the extremist group considered the region's biggest danger.
The explosion occurred outside the Jazeera Palace Hotel near the airport in the capital, Mogadishu. Officials initially but the death toll at four, with eight others wounded, but later, the BBC reported 10 people had been killed in the blast.
A spokesman for al-Shabab later claimed responsibility for the attack.
On Saturday, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, speaking in a joint news conference with President Obama, referred to al-Shabab attacks in Kenya in 2013 and earlier this year, calling the threat from the group to his country "existential."
"The battle we are fighting is not a Kenyan war; Kenya just happens to be on the frontier," he said, referring to Somalia, long regarded as a failed state that has become a breeding ground for Islamist extremists.
President Obama said the security concerns from the group had been "an extensive topic of conversation" with Kenyatta in closed-door meetings earlier in the day.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
