Somali Interior Minister Abdi Shakur Sheikh Hassan has been killed in a suicide attack at his home in the capital, Mogadishu

Officials say that the bomber was his own teenage niece, who had joined the Islamist militant group al-Shabab. The group said that it carried out the attack and said more would follow. The attack against Sheikh Hassan was the third suicide attack in Mogadishu in the last few weeks. His niece had visited his home several times recently and the guards did not carry out a security check. She walked into the home, set off the bomb, and was killed instantly. The minister died from his injuries as efforts were under way to fly him for treatment in neighboring Kenya. Somalia has been torn apart by constant war for more than 20 years. Its last functioning national government was toppled in 1991.