A Somali police officer says a suspected suicide car bomb has detonated near the gate of a hotel close to the presidential palace in Mogadishu.
Capt. Mohamed Hussein said gunfire could be heard inside the Nasa-Hablod hotel. At least two people were killed and eight injured.
A second blast was heard minutes later in the same area and police said it was a second car bomb.
Saturday’s blasts in Somalia’s capital comes two weeks after more than 350 people were killed in a massive truck bombing on a busy Mogadishu street in the country’s worst-ever attack.
The extremist group al-Shabaab often targets high-profile areas of Mogadishu.