At least 13 people have been killed after Somalia's al-Shabaab Islamist militant group drove a car packed with explosives at the gate of a hotel in the capital, Mogadishu.
Al-Shabaab frequently launches bomb and gun attacks in the capital in a bid to topple Somalia's Western-backed government.
It has been pushed into increasingly smaller pockets of territory by a military offensive this year after AMISOM, the African Union's force in Somalia, joined the Somali army in battling the Islamist group.
The hotel has been targeted on previous occasions. 
Sporadic gunfire was heard shortly after the attack.
Al-Shabaab, which wants to impose its strict interpretation of Islam on Somalia, killed a politician, his bodyguard and an official from the prime minister's office in two attacks yesterday.
China's Foreign Ministry said that a Chinese national who worked doing security at its embassy in the country, which is located in the hotel, was among the dead, and that three others received minor injuries.
