A massive car bomb explosion has hit a busy security checkpoint in Somalia capital, Mogadishu, killing at least 61 people and leaving dozens of others wounded.
Police said a truck bomb went off in a busy area prone to heavy traffic due to a security checkpoint and a taxation office on Saturday.
"The blast was devastating, and I could confirm more than 20 civilians killed, there were many more wounded, but the toll can be higher," said police officer Ibrahim Mohamed.
Later in the day an ambulance service official said the death toll had risen to 61.
A man, who had witnessed the blast, said that all he “could see was scattered dead bodies... amid the blast and some of them burned beyond recognition."
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but the city is regularly struck by bombings carried out by al-Shabaab takfiri militants.
The group was forced out of Mogadishu in 2011, but violence still rages in the region with militants still controlling parts of the countryside and even staging attacks in neighboring Kenya as well.
Every now and then, the group carries out deadly attacks against government, military, and civilian targets in the capital as well as regional towns.
It has fought successive Somali governments as well as neighboring governments in Kenya and Uganda.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
