Around 35 people have died in a double car bombing in central Hiraan province, Somalia.
The al-Qaeda linked group al-Shabab has said it was behind the attack. The district commissioner of Mahas town said his home and that of a local MP were the targets.
Meanwhile the second explosion targeted the market, the mayor of Mahas, Mumin Mohamed Halane, was quoted as saying to BBC. The blasts were so powerful that witnesses said people far away from the explosion sites were wounded by flying fragments.
“This was a horrible attack,” witness Adan Hassan said while describing the dead bodies he saw. Al-Shabab has been losing ground in recent months after President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud pledged “total war” against the Islamist militants in August, following an attack on a popular Mogadishu hotel, which saw more than 20 people die.
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Two months later, twin car bomb explosions near a busy junction in Mogadishu killed at least 100 people. Al-Shabab also said it was behind that attack.
President Mohamud subsequently mobilised the Somali army and government-backed clan militias in a bid to take villages and towns from al-Shabab, which controls large swathes of the country.
