A vehicle exploded near a busy hotel in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Monday, killing at least six people and wounding four others, police said.

The blast happened near the entrance of Weheliye hotel on the busy Maka Almukarramah road, Captain Mohamed Hussein said. The hotel was left intact, but the explosion damaged a nearby house.

Hours before, a minibus exploded when police shot at it after it refused to stop as it approached a checkpoint in the capital, police officer Nur Osman told Reuters news agency, adding that two people were wounded.

“A policeman at a checkpoint shot at the speeding minibus. It exploded and killed the al-Shabab fighter that drove it," he said.

Somalia's new Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire condemned the two attacks, saying they were carried out by "bloodthirsty groups".

No one has claimed responsibility for today's explosions in Mogadishu. In the past al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab have claimed responsibility for gun, grenade and bomb attacks in Somalia, and tend to focus on Mogadishu and other regions controlled by the federal government.</s>MOGADISHU, Somalia (CBS) A suicide car bomber detonated near a hotel in Somalia’s capital Monday morning, killing at least six people and injuring four others, police said.

The bomber detonated near the Weheliye hotel on the busy Maka Almukarramah road, Capt. Mohamed Hussein said. Ambulances rushed to the scene.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. The al Qaeda-linked Islamic extremist group al-Shabab has often targeted hotels in Mogadishu. A hotel attack in late January killed at least 26 people.

In a separate blast Monday morning, a suicide bomber detonated a minibus laden with explosives at the gate of a military camp south of the capital. The bomber was killed and two people were wounded, said Col. Yusuf Burhan, a Somali military officer. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Somalia’s new Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire condemned the two attacks, saying they were carried out by “bloodthirsty groups.”

Despite being ousted from most of its key strongholds in south and central Somalia, al-Shabab continues to carry out deadly guerrilla attacks across the country. In the past couple of years it has started to target checkpoints and bases of both the Somali military and the multinational African Union force.

Al-Shabab poses a major challenge to Somalia’s new President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who has vowed to make security a priority in this Horn of Africa country as the fragile central government seeks to expand its control outside key areas like the capital.
A vehicle filled with explosives detonates near a hotel in Mogadishu, killing at least six people and wounding four others.