Car bomb kills at least one in centre of Somali capital

An explosives-laden car blew up in the centre of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Friday killing at least one person and injuring another, police said.

The vehicle was parked next to a hospital in a busy road that is flanked by several hotels.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, though the Islamist militant group Al Shabaab has launched frequent attacks in the city.

Mohamed Hussein, a police officer, told Reuters “So far, I have seen one dead civilian. She was a woman. One man was also injured.,”

The explosion comes hours after the US military confirmed it had killed a high-level al-Shabab extremist commander in an airstrike last weekend.

Ali Mohamed Hussein had been blamed for planning deadly attacks in Mogadishu and is the highest-level al-Shabaab commander killed this year.

Al Shabaab is waging an insurgency to overthrow the Western-backed government and drive out African Union peacekeepers in a bid to take over the country and impose its strict interpretation of Islam.

The group ruled over large parts of the nation in the Horn of Africa until 2011, when it was driven out of Mogadishu by the peacekeepers and Somali troops.