A car bomb exploded near a hotel on a busy street in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Monday, killing at least two people, police said.
Just hours before, a blast had killed the minibus driver who tried to breach a checkpoint, eNCA reported.
Police said the second blast went off outside the Wehliye Hotel on Maka al Mukaram Street. “So far, two civilians have died and two others were injured,” Mohamed Hussein, a police officer, told reporters.
A witness at the scene counted five bodies on the ground. The hotel was intact, but the explosion damaged a nearby house.
Hours before, a minibus exploded after police shot at it after it refused to stop as it approached a checkpoint in the capital.
Police officer Nur Osman said two people were wounded.
“A policeman at a checkpoint shot at the speeding minibus. It exploded and killed the al-Shabaab fighter that drove it,” he said.
In the past, Al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab claimed gun, grenade and bomb attacks in Somalia, and tends to focus on Mogadishu and other regions controlled by the federal government.
