Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud says an arrest has been made in the car bombing that killed at least 20 people in a crowded market in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Saturday.

Speaking at the launch of the country’s second Science and Technology Center in Mogadishu, President Mohamoud, said “the man who carried out the deadly attack on civilians today was captured by the security forces and he is not in custody.”

According to security officials, at midday local time Saturday, a man parked a car laden with explosives at the entrance of an open air fruit and vegetable market in the city’s Afesyoni neighborhood.

“The suspect attacker parked his car, and then detonated it when the security personnel asked him to move the car away,” said Waberi district commissioner Husein Ahmed Ulosow. “He attempted to escape with injuries but the security forces apprehended him and now he is in custody.’

The blast happened at the entrance to the Beerta market, which is close to Mogadishu's main airport. White smoke could be seen billowing over the neighborhood after the blast.

Ulosow says, the Somali president’s motorcade passed the road near the market just 30 minutes before the explosion. It is unknown if the president’s convoy was the target.

Somali men retrieve the dead body of a person who Somali men retrieve the dead body of a person who was killed when a car bomb targeted a police station in the Waberi neighborhood, where President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was visiting a university, in the capital Mogadishu, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2016. Somali men retrieve the dead body of a person who was killed when a car bomb targeted a police station in the Waberi neighborhood, where President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was visiting a university, in the capital Mogadishu, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2016.

Isma’il Mohamud Shidane, a young Somali diaspora member, saw his first such experience the same day he returned to the country and helped the victims.

“I came back from Europe to Somali today, and it was my first experience of such deadly explosion,” he said. “The most shocking scene was that of a body torn apart into three pieces, most of the bodies were women.”

“I have helped the collection of at least 17 dead bodies and 20 more wounded people. It was a disaster,” Moa’lim Muuse, an eyewitness, told VOA Somali.

VOA reporters on the scene say at least 20 people were killed and more than 20 others injured in the blast.

The Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab often carries out such attacks in the capital, although there was no immediate claim of responsibility by the group, which wants to topple the Western-backed government and impose its strict interpretation of Islam.

The latest blast comes as the country has been holding a vote at polling centers across the country over several weeks for a new parliament.

Some 14,000 people representing Somalia's federal states have been chosen to pick the 275 lawmakers. Those members of parliament will choose a new president.

The government, U.N. officials and international donors have said security issues prevented a broader vote.

The parliamentary vote was due to end on Nov. 30, after several delays, but an official said it was now likely to last until mid-December.</s>Soldiers assisted by some residents carry the body of a victim from the scene of a suicide car bomb attack at a market in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu on November 26, 2016. By Mohamed Abdiwahab (AFP)

Mogadishu (AFP) - A car bomb exploded near a busy market in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Saturday killing at least eight people, police said, as medical sources warned the toll could be far higher.

"We have counted about eight civilians so far who were killed in the blast and more than 10 others wounded but the death toll could be higher because the area is a market and it was so densely populated when the blast occurred, most people who were wounded have serious injuries," said police official Ibrahim Mohamed.

Medical sources suggested nearly 30 people had been killed, but this was not confirmed by authorities.

"Our ambulances have collected 13 wounded civilians and 28 dead bodies, the toll could be higher because of the density of the location where the blast occurred," Dr Abdulkadir Abdirahman Adem, director of the AMIN ambulance service, told AFP.

The blast took place in the densely populated Afisiyone area in southern Mogadishu.

"There was chaos and severed dead bodies strewn around the street, the market was so busy with people shopping when the blast ripped through the area. I saw many dead bodies but I could not count, I have helped collect more than 10 of them," said Abdulahi Osman, who witnessed the blast.

Another witness, Ismail Mohamud told AFP: "I can't count all, but, I can tell that I have collected about 20 dead people with my hands, also, there have been other people collecting with me both dead and injured persons."

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but immediate suspicion fell on the Al-Qaeda linked Islamist Shabaab group, which is locked in battle with the Somali government and regularly mounts attacks in the city.

Its most deadly recent attack was in August when a car bomb outside a popular hotel close to the presidential palace left 15 dead.

Despite being driven out of the capital in 2011 by an African Union force deployed in 2007, the group still controls vast swathes of outlying rural areas from which it launches guerrilla operations.

Somalia is currently holding a drawn-out, limited election in which some 14,000 specially selected voters are picking 275 members of parliament who will later join senators in electing a president.

The country had been promised a one-person, one-vote election, however political infighting and insecurity led leaders to ditch the plan in favour of the current process.

After the 1991 fall of strongman president Mohamed Siad Barre, warring clan militia plunged the country into decades of civil war and humanitarian crises, leaving it without a central government and the label of the world's foremost failed state.

An even more limited election in 2012 -- when MPs were nominated by 135 clan elders -- gave Somalia the first central government based in the country since the fall of Barre.</s>Soldiers assisted by some residents carry the body of a victim from the scene of a suicide car bomb attack at a market in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu on November 26, 2016. By Mohamed Abdiwahab (AFP)

Mogadishu (AFP) - A car bomb exploded near a busy market in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Saturday killing at least eight people, police said, as medical sources warned the toll could be far higher.

"We have counted about eight civilians so far who were killed in the blast and more than 10 others wounded but the death toll could be higher because the area is a market and it was so densely populated when the blast occurred, most people who were wounded have serious injuries," said police official Ibrahim Mohamed.

Medical sources suggested nearly 30 people had been killed, but this was not confirmed by authorities.

"Our ambulances have collected 13 wounded civilians and 28 dead bodies, the toll could be higher because of the density of the location where the blast occurred," Dr Abdukadir Abdirahman Adem, director of the AMIN ambulance service told AFP.

The blast took place in the densely populated Afisiyone area in southern Mogadishu.

"There was chaos and severed dead bodies strewn around the street, the market was so busy with people shopping when the blast ripped through the area. I saw many dead bodies but I could not count, I have helped collect more than 10 of them," said Abdulahi Osman, who witnessed the blast.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but immediate suspicion fell on the Al-Qaeda linked Islamist group Shabaab, locked in battle against the Somali government and which regularly mounts attacks in the city.

Its most deadly recent attack was in August when a car bomb outside a popular hotel close to the presidential palace left 15 dead.

Despite being driven out of the capital in 2011 by an African Union force deployed in 2007 the group still control vast swathes of outlying rural areas from which they launch guerrilla operations.</s>A suspected car bomb killed atleast 10 people when it exploded at a police checkpoint next toa busy market in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Saturday, police and witnesses said.

Reuters witnesses saw several bodies at the scene of theblast near the vegetable market in Mogadishu's Waberi district,where shops and stalls were wrecked and ambulances raced awaywith casualties. Pools of blood lay on the ground.

The Somali Islamist group al Shabaab often carries out suchattacks in the capital, although there was no immediate claim ofresponsibility by the group, which wants to topple theWestern-backed government and impose its strict interpretationof Islam.

“The whole market is ruined and people perished. The deathtoll is sure to rise,” Colonel Abdikadir Farah, a policeofficer, told Reuters, saying at least 10 people had been confirmed dead so far, while a dozen more were wounded.

Somalia is still battling an Islamist insurgency while itseeks to rebuild after more than two decades of conflict andchaos that have left the nation in tatters.

It is holding a vote at polling centres across the countryover several weeks for a new parliament. Some 14,000 people representing Somalia's federal states have been chosen to pickthe 275 lawmakers. Those members of parliament will choose a new president.

The government, U.N. officials and international donors havesaid security issues prevented a broader vote. The parliamentary vote was due to end on Nov. 30, after several delays, but anofficial said it was now likely to last until mid-December.

Al Shabaab accuses the presidential and parliamentarycandidates of being foreign stooges. “We urge Somalis to taketheir guns and liberate our Somalia,” Al Shabaab official SheikhAli Mohamed Hussein told Reuters earlier this week.</s>Book title: The Mayor of Mogadishu: A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia

The author’s words in the epilogue illuminate the collective prejudice and patronising attitude that have often dominated rhetoric about Africa. He says: “…I’ve always bristled against grand predictions — a favourite hobby of foreigners throughout Africa, anxious to pin epitaphs to Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, Mali or Kenya. The continent is either doomed to fail or rising like a phoenix.”

Andrew Harding is not vulnerable to this danger. His confrontations of the truths (and half-truths) that Mohamud ‘Tarzan’ Nur, his main subject, offers in their many interactions are as bare-knuckled as they can be as he traces the life of the would-be mayor of Mogadishu from his nomadic roots, his time at the orphanage, (where he was taken by his aunt) his courtship with his wife Shamis, his time in London, and finally his descent back into Somalia 20 years later as the mayor, at a time when only five of Somalia’s cities were under the control of the government, with the rest under Al-Shabaab.

The book begins on Friday, February 21, 2014 and “in a country where the percussion of violence — gunshots, rockets, mortars, grenades, bombs — has, over the decades, become embedded in people’s minds as the background music of any ordinary day…” This excerpt describes an Al-Shabaab attack on Villa Somalia, where President Hassan Sheikh and most of his cabinet members were based. A car bomb has just been detonated outside the hotel. Tarzan is in Villa Somalia’s mosque when the attack happens. That is how we first meet him: in the face of imminent death, and staring down at it with the courage that even his critics, interviewed by the author, don’t contest.

This is, however, not the first time that Tarzan manages to cheat death in the book, as he ‘whirlwinds’ his way through the city of Mogadishu, declaring that any Al-Shabaab militant should be eliminated on the spot, that mobs should stone them to death.

“I will not die twice, I never expected that I would come out alive when I took the job,” Tarzan often offered as a way of explanation, both to the author and in previous interviews with the BBC.

Coming back to Mogadishu with a nascent ambition for a political career after two decades abroad, his appetite for politics grows so much that he has declared his candidature for Somalia presidency. The author interestingly points out that Tarzan’s former title, Mayor of Mogadishu, was also once used by opponents of then Somalia president Siad Barre, to mock him.

Tarzan’s story, the author says, is a “glint worth following in a dark maze”. And a dark maze it is, but perhaps most darkened by dictator Siad Barre, whom the author compares to Syria’s president Assad, and Al-Shabaab insurgents, whom Tarzan tries to contain with relative success, and who welcomed him on his first night back home by firing rockets at his hotel. The Mayor of

Harding’s use of imagery is particularly spectacular, as in one instance, in chapter six, when he describes the exodus of Somalis as the spasms of migration that shuddered through an imploding country.

Awe, sympathy, apathy, doubt are just some of the ingredients that the cocktail of emotions the book forces you to drink from are made of, but never indifference. One can’t help but wonder if the controversial and very unapologetic character of Tarzan forces him to do so.

One must assume that the author had the choice to be prescriptive in his writing, offering solutions to Somalia’s problems, but instead he simply chose to be descriptive, offering a refreshing break from other books with ominous titles and “expert” voices.</s>MOGADISHU, Somalia — A car bomb exploded Saturday near a police station in a busy market in the Somali capital, killing at least 11 people and injuring 16 others, a police official said.

The attack targeted a police station in Mogadishu's Waberi neighborhood while President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had been visiting a university, said Capt. Mohamed Hussein.

He said the death toll was likely to rise, citing the horrific injuries suffered by the victims.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group al-Shabab often carries out such attacks.

Al-Shabab, which seeks to establish an Islamic emirate ruled by a strict version of Shariah law, has waged an insurgency against Somalia's weak U.N.-backed government.

More than 22,000 peacekeepers are deployed in Somalia in the multinational African Union force. Al-Shabab opposes the presence of foreign troops.

Despite being ousted from most of its key strongholds in south and central Somalia, the group continues to launch deadly guerrilla attacks against the Somali government and African Union forces across large parts of the horn of Africa nation.
A car bomb kills at least 20 in Mogadishu.