US Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise trip to Somalia on Tuesday, officials said, becoming the highest-level US official ever to visit the war-ravaged Horn of Africa nation.

The top US diplomat was spending just a few hours in the capital, Mogadishu, and was not scheduled to leave the confines of the fortified airport where he was to meet Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmake.