Bomb blasts kill 5 civilians and 1 police officer in Somalia

At least six people including five civilians were killed and several others wounded on Saturday in separate bomb blasts in Somalia.

The first was a land mine that went off in the southwestern city of Baidoa, killing at least five people, all of them civilians, and wounding several others, Mowlid Ibrahim, a local police officer, told Anadolu Agency over the phone.

The second was a suicide car bomb blast that targeted a tax collection office located near the capital city port of Mogadishu, killing one police officer and wounding six, according to an Information Ministry statement.

Somali-based al-Qaeda affiliated group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.

The group claimed that it had killed two police officers and wounded eight others in a suicide bombing in Mogadishu.

Al-Shabaab was behind a truck-bombing attack in October 2017 in Mogadishu that took some 600 lives, the worst attack in the Horn of Africa country's history.