Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was unharmed after an attack on the heavily fortified presidential palace in Mogadishu, known as Villa Somalia, the U.N. envoy to the Horn of Africa country said.
"President just called me to say he's unharmed. Attack on Villa Somalia had failed. Sadly some lives lost," UN Special Representative Nick Kay wrote on his official Twitter feed.
A loud explosion was heard near the center of the Somali capital Mogadishu on Friday, followed by prolonged heavy bursts of gunfire, a Reuters witness said.
The Somali Islamist militant group al Shabaab said they carried out Friday's car bomb and gun attack against the presidential palace in central Mogadishu that left several people dead.
"We targeted the so-called presidential palace. Our fighters are fighting inside the palace compound," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab's military operations spokesman, told Reuters a little over an hour after the first bomb blast.
However, police said the security forces had snuffed out the attack.
The city has been hit by a series of suicide bomb attacks in the past few weeks, claimed by al Qaeda-linked militants, al Shabaab, who were pushed out of the city about two years ago but have waged a sustained guerrilla campaign. REUTERS