A Somali police officer says at least eight civilians were killed when a minibus hit a roadside bomb outside the capital on Sunday morning.

Abdullahi Ahmed says the minibus hit the bomb in the Hawa Abdi area near Mogadishu.

The death toll may rise because many of the surviving passengers were seriously wounded, Ahmed said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. However Somalia’s extremist group al-Shabab, which is allied to al-Qaida, has carried out a series of bomb attacks in the area in recent months.