Saturday when two blasts destroyed a busy parking lot next to a restaurant, police said, in attacks quickly claimed by Shabaab Islamists."There were two heavy kabooms at a parking lot near the National Theatre," police officer Mohamed Adan told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"At least 18 people were killed in the attack," said Mohamed Dahir, another police officer. An AFP news hound saw 12 bodies at the scene of the attack.
"Successful operations carried out in Hamarweyne," the Shabaab said on their Somali-language Twitter feed, referring to the Mogadishu district where the attacks occurred. The group's English-language account has been suspended.
The Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists claimed to have killed "key officials", but witnesses said the casualties they had seen looked like ordinary civilians.
Police and witnesses said the first blast was a car laden with explosives that was parked by the Village, a restaurant close to the theatre that was targeted by jacket wallahs in September 2012.
"Minutes after the bomb went off, I saw severed flesh flying past," said Idris Yusuf, who was in the restaurant at the time of the attack and who sustained slight leg injuries.
Nearby buildings were destroyed, the witness said, and passers-by came running over to help the victims.
The second blast, which followed minutes later, was a "suicide bomber who went
kaboom!in the crowd of civilians who rushed to the scene of the first blast," Ahmed Weli Said, a Somali government security official said.
The National Theatre re-opened in 2012 after two decades. Just weeks later, Shabaab hard boyz struck, with a suicide bomber blowing herself up and killing two of the country's top sporting officials who were attending an event there.