{A car bomb exploded at a popular seaside restaurant in the Somali capital Thursday, with intense gunfire following the blast, police said.}<\/p>\n
The casualty toll was not immediately known.<\/p>\n
“There was a car bomb explosion at a restaurant at the Lido beach,” police officer Ahmed Bidan said, reporting “shooting and gunfire” immediately after the blast. Later calm returned to the area.<\/p>\n
The Lido beach area in Mogadishu is busy with restaurants, including upmarket establishments popular with business people and diaspora Somalis who have returned home to the city.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab insurgents have carried out a string of similar bombings in the past.<\/p>\n
The Al-Shabaab, who are fighting to overthrow the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu, carry out regular attacks in the capital.<\/p>\n
The Islamists are on a mission to disprove claims they are close to defeat since being routed from Mogadishu in mid-2011 and losing several alleged commanders to US drone strikes.<\/p>\n
Last week the insurgents stormed a Kenyan army base in southwest Somalia, in the latest incident of an AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) base being overrun by the militants.<\/p>\n
Source:Daily Nation:[Car bomb explodes at Mogadishu restaurant->http:\/\/www.nation.co.ke\/news\/africa\/Car-bomb-Mogadishu-restaurant\/-\/1066\/3043784\/-\/da366tz\/-\/index.html]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{A car bomb exploded at a popular seaside restaurant in the Somali capital Thursday, with intense gunfire following the blast, police said.} The casualty toll was not immediately known. “There was a car bomb explosion at a restaurant at the Lido beach,” police officer Ahmed Bidan said, reporting “shooting and gunfire” immediately after the blast. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000071662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2461],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-22689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-daily-nation"],"bylines":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000071662,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22689.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22689.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22689.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22689.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22689.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22689.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000071662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22689"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=22689"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=22689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}