At least 17 killed, several wounded as car bomb blasts off in Somalia

At least 17 people were killed and several others wounded when a car bomb went off outside a hotel near the international airport in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Monday, local media reported.

“The explosion took place at KM4 area in Mogadishu” Goobjoog News, a local radio and TV station reported after the attack.

The Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group al Shabaab, which is trying to topple Somalia’s weak U.N.-backed government, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The city’s Madina hospital received 17 bodies and 28 people with injuries, 12 of them in a critical condition, said Mohammed Yusuf, the hospital’s director.

An eyewitness told that the blast went off at the first checkpoint on the road that leads to Mogadishu airport.

Somalia has been riven by civil war since 1991, when clan warlords overthrew a dictator, then turned on each other.