By Steve Kimble
On Monday, several people were killed in a suicide attack targeted at a police camp in Mogadishu, including children and police officers, according to authorities.

The exact death toll was difficult to estimate immediately after the blast. A police spokesman said that eight police officers were killed, while the Somali government said 7 were killed, and said it included two children. Ali Musa, the head of a Mogadishu ambulance service said that the toll is expected to rise.

The attack took place at the Sarandi camp, which is situated close to Mogadishu’s port. Four people in a truck were involved in the attack, said a Somali police spokesperson Colonel Abdullahi Hassan Barise. “They loaded the truck with vegetables, fuel and explosives and they made it look like the truck was coming from the sea port,” Barise said.

Musa said that paramedics collected dozens of severely wounded from the site to the camp. He said that a fuel tanker that was passing by at the time of the attack also exploded. “This is a cowardly act. Extremists always attack soft targets when they lose in the battlefield,” said Abdulkareem Jama, the minister of information, posts and telecommunications of Somalia.

Heavy fighting between Islamist militants and government forces in Somalia’s capital on Saturday killed 18 people and wounded dozens. The African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia said that the fighting concentrated around attempts to destroy a network of tunnels and trenches used by the jihadist movement Al-Shabaab move weapons and fighters around the capital.

Amongst the dead were two peacekeepers and six rebel leaders that the Ugandan-led mission said were linked to al Qaeda. “The discovery and closure of this tunnel is a major step forward in the stabilization effort in the city,” said the Ugandan-led AMISOM mission in a statement issued Sunday. AMISOM, which supports the transitional government of the country, said that the combined forces now control about 60 percent of the city. However, the government has very little influence beyond Mogadishu, as the Al-Shabaab controls much of southern Somalia.