Somalia car bomb claims eight lives

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A suicide car bomber attacked a police base in Mogadishu on Monday, killing at least 7 people, including 2 children, amid intense urban fighting that has gripped the capital for the third day, officials and witnesses said.
A big Toyota truck loaded with explosives and oil containers blew up on Monday morning at a training center in Mogadishu’s Hamarjajab district, close to the police academy, knocking down nearby houses and injuring dozens of people.
Over the weekend, African Union peacekeepers helping to bolster the weak transitional government claimed to have made a “major step forward” by locating and cutting off an extensive trench system used by Islamist insurgents to funnel “fighters and ammunition in and out of government-held districts.”
But then on Monday, Col. Abdullahi Hassan Barise, a police spokesman, said that suicide attackers drove a “high speed truck” full of fuel and explosives into the gate of the training center. Read More