Deadly explosion hits restaurant in Somali capital

A car bomb killed at least four people and injured several others at a restaurant in Somalia's capital on Tuesday, police said.

Security forces have secured the area around the Banoda restaurant in Mogadishu, said senior police officer Mohamed Abdi. The car with the bomb was parked near Somalia's presidential palace, he said.

"The death toll is sure to rise," Police Colonel Osman Ibrahim told Reuters at the scene.

No group has yet claimed of responsibility for the attack, but it bears the fingerprints of Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab group, which frequently carries out attacks in Mogadishu and throughout Somalia.

Just a day earlier, at least seven people were killed when a bomb planted in a U.N. van exploded in the northern area of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region that is normally peaceful. Four U.N. staff working to help Somali children were among those killed in that attack, the U.N. children's agency announced Tuesday.

Al-Shabab, which is allied to Al-Qaeda, appears to be stepping up attacks in Somalia and across borders even as it loses ground inside the country.

The group has lost some of its top leaders in U.S. airstrikes and has been pushed by African Union forces out of the capital, Mogadishu, and into rural regions mostly in southern Somalia. But it is still able to carry out deadly bombings against government targets and public places seen as popular with foreigners.

The group have also attacked neighboring Kenya, which has sent troops to Somalia to fight the insurgents. Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for an attack earlier this month at Garissa University College in eastern Kenya in which at least 148 people, most of them students, were killed.

Al Jazeera and wire services.