A suicide car bomb by rebels who profess loyalty to al-Qaeda has killed at least 17 people near a police training camp in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.
Al Shabaab, which claimed responsibility for the attack, has waged a three-year insurgency to topple the UN-backed interim government.
'Today we carried out a blessed car bomb attack at the so-called police camp,' al Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told reporters. 'This is a warning to our enemies and a pleasure for us.'
‘We saw a speeding car towards us, and it soon exploded. Every place was soon covered with flames and smoke,’ a police officer told Reuters.
The officer said there were likely casualties in nearby houses, because fragments of the bomb, shrapnel and wrecked car parts had landed on various buildings in the area.
Seredi, the police camp, is about 500 metres from the port of Mogadishu.
The government has been hemmed into just a few blocks of the capital since the rebels launched their insurgency.
