Counterterrorism

Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has called for international cooperation in combatting and defeating terrorism. He made his appeal following a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama.

At least 67 people are known to have died after suspected al-Shabab militants stormed the Westgate shopping centre in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. The governments says the four-day siege is over but many questions remain, as BBC Africa correspondent Moses Rono reports.

A year ago, Kenyan forces seized al-Shabab's final stronghold, the Somali port of Kismayo, sending the group into the country's rural interior and cutting off their economic lifeline. A long and brutal war against a slippery enemy, it seemed, was nearly won. After entering Somalia's conflict in October 2011, the Kenyan military, working together with the Somali National Army and the Ethiopian Defense Forces, had successfully weakened the Islamist terrorist group and seemed poised to restore peace to a fractured nation riddled by two decades of conflict.

This strategic region is facing all forms of violence, after it was transformed into fertile ground for different terrorist groups that are present and coexisting in it.