A car bomb exploded near a hotel on a busy street in the Somali capital on Monday, killing at least two people, police said, hours after another blast killed the driver of a minibus who tried to breach a checkpoint, Reuters reports.

Police said the blast took place outside the Wehliye Hotel on Maka al Mukaram street.

“So far two civilians have died and two others were injured,” Mohamed Hussein, a police officer, told Reuters.

A Reuters witness at the scene counted five bodies on the ground.

The hotel was left intact, but the explosion damaged a nearby house.

Hours before, a minibus exploded after police shot at it after it refused to stop as it approached a checkpoint in the capital, police officer Nur Osman told Reuters, adding that two people were wounded.

“A policeman at a check point shot at the speeding mini-bus. It exploded and killed the al Shabaab fighter that drove it,” he said.

In the past al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab have claimed responsibility for gun, grenade and bomb attacks in Somalia, and tends to focus on Mogadishu and other regions controlled by the federal government.

Source: Reuters