Two vehicles carrying suicide bombers armed with rifles sped towards the main entrance of the airport, witnesses and security officials said on the scene.

Soldiers from the African Union mission (Amisom) fired a rocket that destroyed the first car but five militants leapt out of the second and sprayed gunfire in all directions before blowing themselves up.

“The lead car was destroyed by an RPG (rocket-propelled gre-nade) fired by one of our soldiers and it exploded at the main entrance,” Amisom spokesman Bahoku Barigye said.

But “a number of three or four men jumped out of one of the cars and started shooting everybody”.

He said two Amisom soldiers were killed, as well as five suicide bombers and at least one civilian who was working for a commercial airline.

An AFP reporter saw the bodies of at least two other civilians, two women, at the site of the wreckage of the first car. He said the scene was one of devastation following the attack, with severed limbs, blood and debris from the exploded car strewn on the ground.

The main insurgent movement Shebab group that claimed responsibility for deadly July 11 suicide attacks in Kampala, has vowed to strike Amisom if it did not withdraw from Somalia.

No claims of responsibility have been made but experts suspect the main insurgent movement Shebab group that said it carried out the deadly July 11 suicide attacks in Kampala.

The attack came as representatives of the African Union and UN were at the airport after a meeting with Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the President of the embattled western-backed Somali government (TFG).

“President Sharif informed the delegation that the TFG is committed to resisting the destabilisation campaigns of Shebab extremists,” said a statement from the presidency, without mentioning the attack.

Amisom is in the process of boosting its contingent, which currently stands at 7,200 troops, in a bid to launch a more robust operation aimed at flushing insurgents out of the capital.

The Shebab-led insurgents have been battling Amisom forces and troops from the Western-backed Somali government for control of Mogadishu, in daily clashes the United Nations said have left more than 230 civilians dead in two weeks.

But the Shebab have also resorted to more spectacular attacks on symbolic targets, most recently on August 24 when two fighters stormed a Mogadishu hotel and went on a shooting rampage before blowing themselves up, killing at least 30 people, including six members of Parliament.

The transitional federal government’s (TFG) ministry of information had issued a statement on Wednesday warning against the risk of a major Shebab attack to coincide with the Eid al-Fitr feast marking the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

“We cannot discount the possibility of an Eid spectacular by Shebab to end what has been a fruitless and desperate offensive,” Abdirahman Omar Osman Yarisow said in a statement.

The statement said the fresh offensive launched by the Shebab last month was “expected to end with a final surge towards Amisom and TFG forces bases”.

AFP