Car bombing in Somali capital kills 10

A suicide bomber drove a car into a Mogadishu cafe frequented by members of government security forces on Thursday, killing at least 10 people. 

"A bomber swerved his car bomb into a tea shop where national security men were sitting and blew up," Police Col. Abdikadir Hussein told Reuters. "The tea shop was completely destroyed."

Armed Somali group Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, which followed an assault by its fighters on the president's palace in the Somali capital last week.

"Today's blast was part of our operations in Mogadishu and we shall continue," said Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, Al-Shabab's military operations spokesman.

The blast is part of a surge of attacks in the Somali capital, where the Al-Qaeda-linked group is fighting to topple the internationally backed government.

Recent Al-Shabab attacks have targeted key areas of government or the security forces, in an apparent bid to discredit claims by authorities that they are winning the war against the fighters.

"We carried out the bombing against officers of the national security," Musab told the AFP news agency.

Some witnesses suggested the blast had been detonated by a suicide bomber driving the car, which they said swerved into the cafe.

Soldiers fired into the air after the blast to keep crowds back, as some civilians rushed in to pick up the wounded using sheets as makeshift stretchers. Ambulances later arrived to take the wounded to a hospital.

Although Al-Shabab was driven out of Mogadishu and other major centers in the past two years, it still controls swathes of Somalia’s countryside and smaller towns. It has continued to wage a bombing campaign in the capital, harming government efforts to exert control over areas it governs.

Thursday's blast comes just a week after Al-Shabab fighters carried out a major attack against the heavily fortified presidential palace, killing officials and guards in heavy gun battles.

After that attack, on one of the best-defended locations in the war-torn country, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud branded the Al-Shabab "a marginal group on the brink of extinction" and vowed Somalia's army and the African Union's AMISOM force would "eliminate" them.

Al-Shabab has also fired night-time mortar rounds into the vast, heavily guarded airport complex, home to the 22,000-strong AMISOM force as well as foreign diplomats and aid workers.

Somalia's African neighbors and Western nations worry that territory still controlled by Al-Shabab provides a launch pad for broader operations. The group carried out last year's attack at the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya, during which gunmen killed at least 67 people.

African Union troops — including large contingents from Uganda, Kenya and Burundi — recently recaptured the insurgents' main bases and tried to prop up Somalia's fledgling government forces.

Somalia, which is slowly emerging from two decades of conflict and anarchy, is struggling to rebuild its national security forces. For now, the government still largely relies on AMISOM.

AMISOM has just been reinforced with Ethiopian troops and is expected to launch a new campaign against Al-Shabab strongholds soon.

Driving Al-Shabab out of its strongholds could improve aid access in a nation where 3 million people require humanitarian assistance and a third are in dire need. But U.N. officials worry an offensive now could disrupt the planting season and hurt harvests in Somalia, which suffered a famine in 2011.

Al-Shabab ruled most of southern Somalia from 2006 to 2011, when forces from other African nations sent by the African Union drove them out of Mogadishu and then expelled them from most urban centers.

Al Jazeera and wire services