Al-Shabab threat is global, says Somalia president
Putin warns ex-Soviet allies that Islamist militancy could reach their countries.
COLUMBUS/ MOSCOW (Agencies) - The president of Somalia says the group claiming responsibility for the terrorist attack at a Kenyan mall presents a threat not just to Africa but to the entire world.
Kenyan authorities say dozens of people have died in the attack. Somali militant group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility.
Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud says reports that some of the attackers may have been Somalis who lived in the United States illustrate the global nature of al-Shabab.
Mohamud said after a Monday speech at Ohio State University in Columbus that he has spoken with the president of Kenya and plans to visit the country.
Mohamud says his government is committed to uprooting al-Shabab. He says maintaining security is his top priority as Somalia rebuilds after decades of civil war and terrorist threats.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned ex-Soviet allies on Monday that Islamist militancy fuelling the war in Syria could reach their countries, some of which have Muslim majorities.
He said Russia would provide "additional collective assistance" to Tajikistan to guard its border with Afghanistan after the pullout of most foreign combat troops in 2014.
Russia, which has a large Muslim minority of its own and is fighting an Islamist insurgency, has accused the West of helping militants by seeking Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s removal without paying enough attention to the potential consequences.
Putin told leaders of the six-nation Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) that militants fighting Assad could eventually expand attacks beyond Syria and the Middle East.
"The militant groups (in Syria) did not come out of nowhere, and they will not vanish into thin air," Putin said.
"The problem of terrorism spilling from one country to another is absolutely real and could directly affect the interests of any one of our countries," he said, citing the deadly attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi as an example.
"We are now witnessing a terrible tragedy unfold in Kenya.
The militants came from another country, as far as we can judge, and are committing horrendous, bloody crimes," Putin said at a CSTO summit in the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi.
His words appeared to be a warning about violence spreading from both Syria and Afghanistan, which shares a long border with CSTO member Tajikistan in Central Asia.
Reiterating concerns violence could spread to former Soviet
Central Asia and Russia after the pullout of most foreign combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, he said CSTO nations agreed to draft a plan to protect the border.
"We will provide additional collective assistance to Tajikistan to strengthen the Tajik-Afghan state border," Putin said. He gave no details.
Russian border guards used to patrol the Tajik frontier with Afghanistan but left in 2005.
The CSTO security alliance also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Belarus. Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan all have mostly Muslim populations.
Central Asian states Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, neither members of CSTO, also have frontiers with Afghanistan.
Kenyan police on Monday said they had arrested more than 10 suspects for questioning over an ongoing attack on a Nairobi shopping mall where more than 60 people were massacred.
"We ve arrested more than 10 individuals for questioning in relation to the Westgate attack," police said in a message on their Twitter account.
