A suicide car bomb blast has killed at least eight people at a security checkpoint near the presidential palace in the Somali capital, in an attack claimed by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group. The checkpoint falls on the route to the airport in Mogadishu, used by Somalia’s president and prime minister. “The mujahideen carried [out] a martyrdom operation targeting the main security checkpoint of the presidential palace,” it said. “We have confirmed that eight people, most of them civilians, died and seven others wounded in the car bomb blast,” district police chief Mucawiye Ahmed Mudey said. A witness on Saturday said the car bomb was detonated when police stopped the driver for a security check.