The explosion occurred around 6 p.m. (local hour) at a military checkpoint close to the National Theatre, less than a kilometre away from the presidential palace, Villa Somalia. The death toll, confirmed by Mogadishu mayor’s spokesman Abdifitah Halane, included one soldier and five civilians. According to the police, the number of casualties was not definitive, since at the moment of the blast many pedestrians crowded the street. Al-Shabaab, the extremist Islamic group linked to al-Qaida, claimed the responsibility for the attack.

The car containing the bomb was driven by an attacker at high speed toward the military checkpoint, one of the several that enclose the presidential compound. The explosive was then detonated after soldiers tried to stop the care, the police said. This was the third car bomb attack in March in the Somali capital: during the previous week, at least 13 people were killed and 14 were injured in two separate explosions, both attributed to Al-Shabaab by authorities.

According to Human Right Watch’s World Report 2016, attacks and abuses by Al-Shabaab are taking an increasingly heavy toll on the population. As a matter of fact, the extremist group, officially founded in 2006, particularly targets civilians and civilian structures, especially in Mogadishu, aiming to fight the government and to turn Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state.    

For more information, please read:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-somalia-blast-idUSKBN16S1UE?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Feed:+Reuters/worldNews+(Reuters+World+News)
https://apnews.com/35644b67aa984c89abe7dcb40b4c0c3a/Car-bomb-kills-6-near-Somalia-presidential-palace:-Official
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/car-bomb-kills-5-somalia-capital-170321160204283.html
https://www.rt.com/news/381672-mogadishu-car-bomb-attack/
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/somalia