A UN van is seen damaged by an improvised explosive device outside the UN compound in Garowe, the administrative capital of Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland, on Monday.
Reuters/Mogadishu
At least 10 people were killed and about a dozen wounded when a car rammed into a busy restaurant and exploded in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Tuesday, police said.
"At least 10 people died, including government soldiers and residents, and a dozen more were injured," said Colonel Osman Ibrahim, a senior police officer at the scene of what police say was a suicide attack.
"The death toll is sure to rise," he added.
The attack is the latest in a string of bombings in the war-torn Horn of Africa nation, where Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shabaab Islamists are fighting to topple the government.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the restaurant is located in the centre of Mogadishu, where the Shabaab Islamists have carried out repeated attacks.
UN envoy to Somalia Nick Kay, who was visiting colleagues in the northeastern town of Garowe a day after the Shabaab killed six people in an attack on a UN bus there, condemned "another atrocity".
He said the "killing needs to stop".
Four staff from the UN children's agency Unicef were killed in the bus attack, including two Kenyans, an Afghan and a Ugandan. Two Somali security guards were also killed in that attack.
The Shabaab, meaning "youth", emerged out of a bitter insurgency against Ethiopia, whose troops entered Somalia in a 2006 US-backed invasion to topple the Islamic Courts Union that was then controlling the capital Mogadishu.
Shabaab rebels continue to stage frequent attacks in their fight to overthrow Somalia's internationally-backed government, as well as to counter claims that they are close to defeat due to the loss of territory, regular US drone strikes against their leaders and defections.
In other recent attacks Shabaab gunmen shot dead a Puntland lawmaker, Adan Haji Hussein, on Saturday and on Sunday killed three African Union troops in an ambush in the south of the war-ravaged country.
