A car bomb exploded at a restaurant near the presidential palace in the heart of Somalia’s capital on Tuesday, killing at least three people and injuring 10 others, police said.
The site of the explosion — an area frequented by government officials — has been targeted before. The restaurant is across the street from the Central Hotel, where militants with the Islamist group Al-Shabaab killed at least 15 people in a bombing and gun attack in February.
A car packed with explosives caused Tuesday’s blast, said Col. Abdirahman Muse, a police officer at the scene. No group immediately claimed responsibility.
The streets outside the restaurant were “littered with debris and human body parts,” witness Mohamed Ali said. The explosion damaged nearby buildings and vehicles at a parking lot, according to Ali.
Ambulances took wounded people to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Tuesday’s bombing is at least the third high-profile attack near or at a Mogadishu hotel.
On February 20, militants attacked the Central Hotel, blowing up a car bomb outside before shooting people and detonating another bomb inside. Al-Shabaab, a militant group that has battled the Somali government for years with a goal of creating a fundamentalist Islamic state, claimed responsibility for the attack.
More than a month later, on March 27, gunmen detonated explosives and shot people at a different Mogadishu hotel — the Makka Al Mukarama — leaving at least 20 people dead. The attack stretched into the next day before security personnel killed all the assailants.
Al-Shabaab also said it was responsible for the Makka Al Mukarama attack, claiming it targeted the hotel because its guests were spies and government officials.
Among those killed in the March 27 assault was Yusuf Mohamed Ismail Bari-Bari, Somalia’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, the Somali government said.