Al Shabaab car bomb rocks Mogadishu

Mogadishu:  A car bomb exploded in the heart of the Somali capital yesterday, wounding two people in an attack Somalia's Al Shabaab rebel group said was carried out by its militants.

The blast, which triggered bursts of gunfire in Mogadishu, was the latest in a wave of bomb attacks in the country where the embattled UN-backed government is struggling to secure the city against Al Qaida-linked Islamist rebels.

"We were behind the car bomb explosion. We targeted security forces," Shaikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, a spokesman for Al Shabaab's military operations, told Reuters.

The blast happened in Mogadishu's busy administrative district, near the bustling Kilometre four road (K4) junction. Police said four suspects had been detained and they were investigating a second suspicious vehicle in the city.

There has been a surge in suicide bombings and remotely detonated blasts in Mogadishu since Al Shabaab pulled most of its fighters out of the coastal city in August, vowing to turn increasingly to Al Qaida-inspired tactics.

Al Shabaab carried out a truck bombing in October which killed more than 70 people, the group's deadliest attack since the start of their rebellion in 2007. A spate of smaller attacks has followed.

Internal division

The militants have been weakened in past months, on the back foot against African Union soldiers in Mogadishu and after losing territory to Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in southern and central Somalia. There are also signs of growing internal divisions within the rebel ranks. Piracy has also flourished in the chaos of the last two decades. Yesterday, pirates freed British hostage Judith Tebbutt more than six months after shooting dead her husband, after receiving a ransom.