Soldiers watch the site of an explosion in Mogadishu. At least three people were killed, including the suicide bomber who attacked a convoy of African Union peacekeepers in the Somali capital. Right: A shell-shocked woman walks over a corpse after the suicide bombing attack.

Reuters/AFP/Mogadishu

A suicide bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into an African peacekeeping convoy in the Somali capital yesterday, killing two civilians in the latest attack to expose the fragility of recent security gains.

“It was a huge explosion, buildings all around were rocked by the blast,” said Hussein Gure, a witness who was driving nearby when the car exploded. “There were several people killed or wounded.”

The blast was claimed by Islamist Shebaab rebels who carried out a deadly assault on a nearby United Nations base last month and another bombing in a Mogadishu market this week.

Shebaab spokesman Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, told Reuters that the convoy was carrying a number of American officials – a report that could not be confirmed independently.

“We are behind the martyrdom explosion ... the Americans were our main target,” he added.

The blast flattened makeshift shops on Maka Al Mukarama road in central Mogadishu and ripped the wheels off one vehicle belonging to the country’s African Union (AU) peacekeeping force.

The bodies of two civilians were pulled out of the wreckage, a Reuters witness said.

No peacekeepers died but a number of people were wounded, said an official from the Mogadishu mayor’s office.

“We shall not bury the remains of the bomber. We shall throw them into the rubbish pit,” the mayor’s secretary, Abdikafi Hilowle, told reporters at the scene.

“If the Shebaab are Muslims, they would not kill Muslims during Ramadan,” he said, referring to the holy Islamic month which began this week.

In previous years, the month of Ramadan – which began this week – has seen a surge in Shebaab attacks, with gunmen urged to carry out deeds by their extremist preachers.

Ambulance sirens wailed through the congested streets and a plume of black smoke billowed into the sky above the city near the UN Development Programme (UNDP) base where 22 people were killed in a Shebaab assault last month.

“We have carried eight injured civilians including two women,” said the director of Mogadishu’s ambulance service, Abdikadir Abdirahman.

In the attack earlier this week, five police officers were wounded when the Shebaab blew up their vehicle in Mogadishu. 

Somalia is attempting to rebuild itself after two decades of civil war and lawlessness, triggered by the overthrow of president Siad Barre in 1991.

The fragile government is being backed by international aid aimed at preventing it from becoming a haven for Al Qaeda-style militants in east Africa.

Despite recent infighting inside the Shebaab – including the recent killing of the organisation’s top leaders in a bloody purge – analysts warn the extremist group is far from defeated.

The Shebaab have lost a string of towns to the AU force, which fights alongside government soldiers.

However, key Shebaab strongholds remaining include rural southern and central Somalia, while another faction has dug into remote and rugged mountains in the northern Puntland region.