Daily Times

Nine people were killed in a powerful car bomb blast late Sunday at a cafe in the Somali capital Mogadishu that was packed with football fans watching the Euro 2024 final, local media said, citing police.

Images posted online showed a huge fireball and plumes of smoke billowing into the night sky as the explosion ripped through the popular restaurant in the centre of the city.

“A car bomb detonated tonight outside Top Coffee Restaurant… placed by Kharijite terrorists,” the Somali National News Agency reported, using the term officials adopt to describe the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab jihadist group. “Preliminary police reports confirm nine fatalities and around 20 injuries,” SONNA cited police spokesman Major Abdifitah Aden Hassan as telling state media. Somali National Television reported the same information about the bombing, which took place as young men were watching the match between Spain and England.

Police have cordoned off the area, which is close to the presidential palace compound known as Villa Somalia and was very busy at the time of the bombing.

Al-Shabaab has been waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia’s fragile federal government for more than 17 years and has carried out numerous bombings in Mogadishu and other parts of the country.