Unlike previous attacks by the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab, gunmen did not accompany the suicide bomber, said police Capt.
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The explosions shattered windows in the nearby airport, Reuters reports.
A former Islamist lawmaker turned al Shabaab militant was one of the drivers in Tuesday’s double auto bomb attack on the African Union’s main peacekeeping base in Somalia, al Shabaab said.
In the broadcast aired late on Tuesday on the militants’ radio al Andalus, Ismail, also known by the nickname of Badbaado, said in audio recorded before the attack that he would be one of the suicide bombers.
One suicide vehicle bomber tried to speed through the barrier at the UN Mine Action Services office but guards shot at the auto. “We have killed dozens of them”, Muscab, a spokesman for the group, said.
The U.S. Mission to Somalia expressed “outrage” at the terror act, and called it “yet another demonstration of al-Shabaab’s brutality in its efforts to destabilize Somalia”. He said the United States remains “committed to helping Somalia progress along a path towards peace and prosperity and the defeat of terrorist groups”.
People arriving on global flights said the blasts shattered windows in the airport buildings. Al Shabab opposes the presence of foreign troops in Somalia.
Government officials were not immediately available for a comment.
The African Union Peacekeeping Mission in Somalia (AMISIOM) condemned the attack, which it described as “senseless” and aiming to cripple the lives of Somalis.
The entrance targeted in the bombing is regularly used by employees who work at the airport and is located near United Nations and African Union (AU) buildings that connect to the airport.
The country in the Horn of Africa was plunged into anarchy in the early 1990s following the toppling of military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The U.N. refugee agency on Tuesday increased its funding appeal to almost $500 million to finance the voluntary return and reintegration of Somali refugees from the sprawling Dadaab camp in Kenya, which hosts some 330,000 Somalis.
“Despite the security situation now in Somalia, people are returning on a daily basis”, UNHCR’s representative in Somalia Caroline van Buren told a news briefing in Geneva.
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“We have established the death of eight people and others have been injured”.
