A suicide bomber blew himself up at a shop selling tea in Somalia’s capital, killing at least seven people, police and witnesses have said.
The explosion on Friday occurred inside a tea shop in Bar
Bulsho Mogadishu near the presidential palace in central Somalia, said police
spokesman Sadik Dudishe.
Al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group claimed responsibility
for the attack in a statement on its Arabic media unit Shahada News Agency, the
SITE Intelligence Group reported on Friday.
It put the number of dead at 11 and wounded at 18; its
numbers on casualties in attacks often differ from government figures.
Adan Qorey, a resident of the Bar Bulsho area, said the tea shop
was often crowded in the afternoon and evening with patrons drinking tea and
chewing khat, a mildly narcotic native shrub also known as miraa. The Friday afternoon blast occurred at a checkpoint on a road leading to
the parliament and the president’s office and the shop is frequented by
soldiers, witnesses said.
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud took
office in May last year promising an “all-out war” against the fighter group.
His government launched a major offensive against al-Shabab
in August last year, joining forces with local clan militias in an operation
backed by African Union (AU) troops and US air raids.
The group had at one time controlled the capital, until 2011,
when it was pushed out by the African Union troops, but it still holds
territory in the countryside.