African Union troops said Sunday they had launched a new offensive against al-Qaida-affiliated Shebab rebels in southern Somalia, vowing to flush the insurgents out of rural areas.

The African Union Mission in Somalia, or AMISOM, said "Operation Jubba Corridor" was launched on Friday in the Bay and Gedo regions south of the capital Mogadishu along with Somali government troops.

The leader of Somalia's al-Qaida-affiliated Shebab rebels on Friday issued an Eid message calling for a wave of new recruits in order to "lift the pain of Muslims" across East Africa.

In a statement that underscored the group's ambition to expand its operations, Shebab leader Ahmed Diriye, also known as Ahmed Umar Abu Ubaidah, took aim at Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Uganda.

At least 30 members of Somalia's Al-Qaida-affiliated Shebab militants were killed in a U.S. drone strike on Thursday, the Kenyan government said, but backtracked on its earlier claim that the alleged mastermind of the Garissa University massacre was among the dead.

Missiles fired from an unidentified military aircraft struck Shebab targets in southern Somalia early on Thursday causing casualties, sources said.

According to traditional elders near Bardhere town in the southern Gedo region, at least two missiles struck vehicles believed to be carrying commanders of the Somali-led Al-Qaida affiliate.

Somalia's government said Saturday that 12 Shebab militants were killed in Friday evening's raids on two heavily-fortified Mogadishu hotels.

Internal Security Minister Abdirasak Omar Mohamed told reporters that "it was only them (the attackers) who died" in the coordinated suicide strikes.

Somalia's Shebab militants stormed two hotels in the capital Mogadishu on Friday, killing at least three people, before they were themselves killed in heavy fighting, security forces said.

At least one suicide bomber used a car packed with explosives to smash open the gates of one of the two hotels, both fortified, guarded, and popular with lawmakers from the nearby parliament, as well as government workers and businessmen.

Two Kenyan policemen have been freed after over two years being held hostage in Somalia by Shebab militants, Kenya's police chief said.

The police constables, Joseph Wambugu and Fredrick Chirchir, were kidnapped in an attack in May 2013 in Kenya's northeastern Garissa district, when four other officers were killed.

Shebab militants killed at least 14 workers in northern Kenya on Tuesday, officials said, the latest in a wave of attacks in the east African nation by the Somali-led Islamists.

The attack occurred just outside the town of Mandera in Kenya's far northeastern region, which borders Ethiopia and war-torn Somalia, and comes a little more than two weeks before U.S. President Barack Obama is due to make his first presidential visit to Kenya, where his father was born.

African Union troops fighting Somalia's Shebab insurgents have pulled back from several key towns following a series of attacks by the al-Qaida-affiliated fighters, local officials said Friday.

The withdrawal, a rare retreat after AU troops seized swathes of territory from the radical Islamists, includes the towns of Qoryoley and Awdhegele, which have since been taken over by  Shebab in Somalia's southern Lower Shabelle region.

Several Somali soldiers were killed overnight Sunday when Shebab fighters attacked a base in the southern Kismayo region, officials and witnesses said Monday.

The attack is the latest in a string of assaults by the al-Qaida-affiliated insurgents, who last week stormed a base manned by the African Union forces in Somalia (AMISOM), killing dozens.