AfriqueCAN:
A powerful blast ripped through a popular cafe in the centre of the Somali capital Mogadishu late Sunday, an AFP journalist said, with local media reporting the venue was packed with football fans watching the final of the Euro 2024 tournament.
It was not immediately known if there were casualties, but the journalist reported that firefighters, police and ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion at the Top Coffee restaurant.
Police have cordoned off the area, which is close to the presidential palace compound known as Villa Somalia and was very busy at the time of the blast.
Images posted online showed a huge fireball and plumes of smoke billowing into the night sky over the city.
Several local media reports said the blast was caused by a suicide bomber or a car bomb but the information could not be verified.
The authorities have not yet made any public comment on the incident.
The Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabab terrorist group has been waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia’s fragile federal government for more than 17 years and has carried out numerous bombings in Mogadishu and other parts of the country.
There had been a relative lull in attacks in recent months as the government pressed on with an offensive against the Islamist militants.
But on Saturday, five inmates said to be Al-Shabab fighters were killed in a shootout with prison guards in an attempted jail break from the main prison in Mogadishu.
Three guards were also killed and 18 others wounded in the confrontation, prison officials said, after the prisoners managed to get hold of weapons.
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has vowed “all-out” war against the terrorists and government troops have joined forces with local clan militias in a military campaign supported by an African Union force and US air strikes.
But the offensive has suffered setbacks, with Al-Shabab earlier this year claiming it had taken multiple locations in the centre of the country.
Although driven out of the capital by AU forces in 2011, Al-Shabab still has a strong presence in rural Somalia.
It has carried out repeated attacks against political, security and civilian targets, mostly in Somalia but also in neighbouring countries including Kenya.
Somalia last month called for the African Union to slow the planned withdrawal of its forces from the troubled country.
UN resolutions called for troop numbers in the AU peacekeeping mission, known as ATMIS, to be reduced to zero by December 31 with security handed over to the Somali army and police.
The third and penultimate phase was to see the departure of 4,000 soldiers out of a total 13,500 ATMIS troops by the end of June.
But, following a request from Somalia’s government to see only 2,000 troops leave in June and the remaining 2,000 in September, the AU Peace and Security Council said it “strongly supports… a phased approach” to the drawdown.
