A car bomb ripped through a market in Mogadishu on Sunday, killing at least 39 people and injuring about 50.
The car was driven by a suicide bomber, said Ahmed Abdulle Afrax, the mayor of Wadajir district, where the bombing happened.
“We carried 39 dead bodies and there were many others injured,” Dr Abdikadir Abdirahman, director of the Aamin Ambulance Service, told Reuters.
Dr Mohamed Yusuf, the manager of the Madina hospital, said they received 47 injured people.
A witness, Abdulle Omar, said the market was destroyed: “I was staying in my shop when a car came into the market and exploded. I saw more than 20 people lying on the ground. Most of them were dead.”
Al-Shabaab, the Islamist insurgent group that is fighting the UN-backed Somali government, did not immediately claim responsibility.
Al-Shabaab has been able to carry out increasingly deadly attacks despite losing most of its territory to African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government.
This month Somalia elected a new president, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, a dual US-Somali citizen and former prime minister.
The attack underlines the challenge facing Mohamed, who has inherited an administration with limited control over Somali territory due to the presence of al-Shabaab, and is heavily propped up by the international community.
The president’s inauguration takes place on Wednesday, although he officially took office this week at a ceremony marred by a series of mortar strikes near the presidential palacethat left two children dead.
African Union troops drove al-Shabaab militants out of Mogadishu in August 2011 but the fighters continue to control rural areas and launch repeated attacks in the capital.
Civil war has riven Somalia since 1991. Aid agencies warn that a severe drought has placed large swaths of the country at risk of famine.
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