A suicide bomber killed at least four people and injured several others on Tuesday after detonating a car packed with explosives in Mogadishu, Somali security forces said.

“A suicide bomber drove a car loaded with explosives into the entrance of Wardhigley District offices,” said security official, Mohamed Samow.

“We understand that at least four people were killed and several injured in the explosion,” he added.

Witnesses at the scene reported a similar toll.

“It was a very large explosion that destroyed several buildings and vehicles in the area,” said Said Farey, who saw the attack.

“The bodies of several people killed and injured were taken away in an ambulance,” he added.

The district mayor, who was in the building at the time, escaped unharmed, administrative and security sources said.

Although the attack was not immediately claimed, the militant group Al Shabaab has a history of targeting government buildings in the Somali capital.

The Al Qaeda-linked militants were chased out of Mogadishu in 2011 but still control large swathes of rural Somalia, from where they orchestrate attacks.

For over a decade Shabaab militants have fought the government in Mogadishu, which is backed by the international community and a 20,000-strong African Union force.

Meanwhile, a Turkish engineer died in Mogadishu after a bomb was placed under his pick-up truck, a security source said on Monday, in an attack claimed by Al Shabaab.

“The explosive device was presumably attached to a pick-up truck on which the Turkish citizen was transported. We have later confirmed that he was an engineer,” said Ahmed Adan, a Somali security official, speaking about Sunday’s attack.

“We don’t know the motives” or who was responsible, he added.

Al Qaeda-linked Shabaab claimed in a statement that it had carried out the attack.

It said the victim had been working “at the Turkish military camp in Mogadishu.”

The engineer, whose identity has not been revealed, died of his wounds in hospital, according to Turkish media

Turkey is a leading donor and investor in Somalia.

Agence France-Presse