Islamist militants rammed a car bomb into a police compound north of Somalia's capital on Tuesday and opened fire on officers, leaving at least 28 people dead, officials and witnesses said. Al Shabaab - the al Qaeda-linked group that claimed responsibility for a deadly raid on a shopping mall in neighbouring Kenya in September - said it carried out the morning assault.
Gunfire rang out at the police station in Baladweyne, near the border with Ethiopia, into the early afternoon as locals rushed for cover. African Union (AU) peacekeepers and Somali troops surrounded the compound and opened fire. Witnesses said the shooting inside then stopped. Seven civilians, 10 militants and 11 police officers were killed, said Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Osman - figures that were confirmed by several people at the scene.
Some witnesses said the militants blasted their way through the gate and sprayed people inside with bullets. Colonel Dibad Osman, a spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping force in Baladweyne, told Reuters the attackers failed to blow the gate, then tried to climb inside the compound.
"Some militants died in the car explosion while others were shot dead as they jumped over the wall. The (AU) forces suffered slight injuries," he told reporters at the scene of the attack. Al Shabaab has been driven out of many of its strongholds, including Mogadishu and Baladweyne, over the past two years. But it has kept up car bombings and guerrilla attacks.
Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab's military spokesman, said 25 Somali policemen and 18 Djiboutian members of the country's AMISOM peacekeeping force were killed. He told Reuters many of the militants managed to get away unharmed. The Islamists have exaggerated the number of casualties in the past, just as government officials have at times played down the dead in clashes with insurgents.