The Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group al Shabaab, which is trying to topple Somalia’s weak U.N.-backed government, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The city’s Madina hospital received 17 bodies and 28 people with injuries, 12 of them in a critical condition, said Mohammed Yusuf, the hospital’s director.

The blast went off at the first checkpoint on the road that leads to Mogadishu airport, said Farah Hussein, a shopkeeper who witnessed the attack.

Somalia has been riven by civil war since 1991, when clan warlords overthrew a dictator, then turned on each other. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar Writing by Duncan Miriri Editing by Peter Graff)