A car bomb hit a convoy of cars carrying Qatari officials through the centre of Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Sunday, killing at least eight Somalis, officials said The visiting delegation of Qataris, who were travelling in the Somali interior minister's bullet-proof vehicle, were "safe", a security officer said, without going into further detail. The minister was not in the car at the time, reuters reported. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast but it bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda-linked rebels who have kept up a campaign of guerrilla-style attacks since the army and peacekeepers pushed them out of bases in the city. The blast tore through the busy 'Kilometre 4' road junction in the centre of Mogadishu's commercial and administrative district. Gunfire rang out immediately after the explosion as the convoy's security guards fired into the air to disperse onlookers. Qatar has been forging closer political ties with Somalia in recent years as it seeks to expand its influence in the Horn of Africa region. "The car bomb targeted delegates from Qatar. They are safe," Hassan Osman, a security official, said, adding that the minister's car was damaged in the blast. The chairman of Mogadishu's Hodan district, where the blast occurred, told reporters at the scene eight people had been killed and five wounded, most of them civilians.
