At least 20 people were killed and 30 injured on Friday after a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant near the port of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.
“A high-speed car exploded at the Luul Yemeni restaurant. I was on my way to the restaurant, but came back when the explosion blanketed the area with smoke,” Ahmed Abdullahi, who lives near the scene, told Reuters news agency.
Government-controlled Mogadishu Radio reported that property had also been destroyed and police cordoned off the area. “Our teams confirmed that 20 people had been killed and 30 injured,” said the director of the ambulance service in the capital, Abdikadir Abdirahman.
The attack was claimed by Al Shabab, an Al Qaeda affiliate operating in Somali territory. The group was expelled from the capital in 2011, but it still controls large rural areas, from where it organizes guerrilla operations and suicide bombings.
The aim is to overthrow the Somali federal government and establish its own government on the basis of its strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
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