17 dead in Somalia blast

Mogadishu, July 22 

Seventeen persons were killed and more than two dozen wounded when a car bomb exploded in Mogadishu on Monday, the latest deadly attack on Somalia’s capital claimed by Al-Shabaab militants.

The blast, near a security checkpoint on the main road to the international airport, reverberated throughout the city and sent massive plumes of black smoke into the air. Witnesses described scenes of carnage as a car veered out of traffic and detonated outside the main gate of a hotel.

“The bodies of 17 killed in the blast were taken to the hospital mortuary while 28 others were admitted for various wounds,” said Mohamed Yusuf, the hospital’s director. AFP