Deadly car bomb targets busy cafe in Somali capital | Al-Shabab News

The Al-Shabab group claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on the cafe while people were watching the 2024 European Championship final.

A car bomb exploded in front of a cafe in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu. At least nine people were killed and several others injured while guests were watching the final of the 2024 European Football Championship on television, the government said.

The al-Qaeda-linked armed group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for Sunday’s deadly attack via an affiliated radio station, saying the bombing targeted a location where security forces and government officials meet at night.

Mohamed Yusuf, a national security official, told AFP on Monday that nine people were killed in the incident, raising the official death toll that authorities had put at five late Sunday.

“Nine civilians were killed and 20 others injured in the explosion,” he said.

“There were many people in the restaurant, most of them young people watching the football match… but thank God most of them were able to get out safely after climbing up the rear boundary wall using ladders and jumping over it,” Yusuf added.

Images posted online showed a huge fireball and plumes of smoke rising into the night sky as the explosion rocked the popular restaurant in the city centre on Sunday.

Police officer Mohamed Salad rushed to the scene a few minutes after the explosion and told AFP that several bodies had been discovered under the rubble.

The bomb also destroyed ten cars and damaged several buildings in a nearby, well-guarded area near the presidential palace.

Although al-Shabab has lost large areas of territory to government forces and their allies, the group continues to carry out raids and deadly attacks against the government.

Al-Shabab has been fighting to overthrow the fragile central government in Mogadishu for more than 17 years and has carried out numerous bombings and other attacks in the capital and other parts of the country.

To stay in power, the Somali federal government depends on the support of foreign troops.

The government has joined forces with local armed groups to fight the group in a campaign backed by an African Union force and U.S. airstrikes.

But the offensive suffered setbacks. At the beginning of the year, al-Shabab claimed to have captured several locations in the center of the country.

Somalia called on the African Union last month to slow down the planned withdrawal of its troops from the crisis-ridden country.

UN resolutions called for the troop strength of the AU peacekeeping mission ATMIS to be reduced to zero by December 31 and for security to be handed over to the Somali army and police.

In the third and penultimate phase, 4,000 ATMIS soldiers – out of a total of 13,500 – were to be withdrawn by the end of June.

But the Somali government announced that it would only withdraw 2,000 soldiers in June and the remaining 2,000 in September.