Suicide bomber targets queue of young recruits registering at a military base in the capital.
Several people have been reported killed in a suicide bombing at an army recruitment centre in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.
The attacker on Sunday targeted a queue of young recruits lining up outside the Damanyo base, killing at least 10 people, the Reuters news agency quoted witnesses as saying.
Teenagers were lining up at the base’s gate when the suicide bomber detonated the explosives, they said.
Abdisalan Mohamed said he had seen “hundreds of teenagers at the gate as we passed by in a bus”.
“Abruptly, a deafening blast occurred, and the area was covered by dense smoke. We could not see the details of casualties,” he added.
A military captain who gave his name as Suleiman described the attack as he had seen it unfold.
“I was on the other side of the road. A speeding tuk-tuk stopped, a man alighted, ran into the queue and then blew himself up. I saw 10 people dead, including recruits and passers-by. The death toll may rise,” he told Reuters.
Dozens of abandoned shoes and the remains of the suicide bomber remained visible at the scene.
Medical staff at the military hospital told Reuters they had received 30 wounded people from the blast and six of them had died immediately.
Separately, an official told the Anadolu news agency that the attack had killed at least 11 people.
The government has cordoned off the area.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the attack echoed a similar incident in 2023 when a suicide bomber killed 25 soldiers at the Jale Siyad base, located opposite the Damanyo facility.
Sunday’s attack follows the assassination on Saturday of Colonel Abdirahmaan Hujaale, commander of Battalion 26, in the Hiiran region amid local reports of the al-Shabab armed group’s infiltration into government and security forces.
Al-Shabab has been fighting the Somali government for nearly two decades and frequently targets government officials and military personnel.