A suicide car bomber struck a camp for the Somali security forces in the south of the capital Mogadishu, killing nearly eight people including six police officers, and wounded several others, officials said Sunday.

The suicide bomber forcibly entered the camp but a guard opened fired on the vehicle causing it to explode in the middle of the camp known as Haama Dhowr. Six police officers were killed and one civilians passer-by as well as the suicide bomber, Abdelfatah Ibrahim Shawey, deputy Mayor of Mogadishu, told reporters.

Shaweye said he believes the attacker, who drove an SUV loaded with explosives, was a foreigner but gave no further details, adding that an investigation will be carried out and the perpetrators prosecuted.

Local health officials and voluntary ambulance services in Mogadishu said that several people most of them by-standers were wounded by the flying debris from the powerful blast that shook the southern parts of the restive Somali capital Mogadishu.

“The sound of the explosion was deafening and there were fragments from the vehicle were everywhere and caused the injury of several people around the vicinity of the camp,” Ali Mire, a local ambulance worker, told Xinhua.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for this latest attack which comes as insurgent fighters and Somali government forces have been engaged in close two weeks of clashes which left almost 150 people dead and nearly 500 others wounded most of them civilians caught in the crossfire. Nearly 50,000 others were displaced from their homes in Mogadishu as a result of the renewed fighting.

Insurgent fighters have managed to capture key positions from Somali government forces who have launched a massive retaliatory offensive last Friday but were unable to hold on to land reclaimed from the insurgent groups.

Somalia, a country of nine million, was plagued by civil strife and has been without a strong central government since the overthrow of the late Somali president Mohamed Siyad Barre in 19991.

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