So­ma­li­a’s new army chief, Gen­eral Mo­hamed Ahmed Ji­male, sur­vived a car bomb at­tack in Mo­gadishu that claimed the lives of at least 15 peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to po­lice and mil­i­tary of­fi­cials.

The newly ap­pointed mil­i­tary boss was said to be trav­el­ling in a con­voy with mil­i­tary of­fi­cials when the blast hit near the Min­istry of De­fence. He had just left his swear­ing in cer­e­mony,

When mil­i­tary of­fi­cials and of­fi­cers ar­rived on the scene they counted 15 badly mu­ti­lated bod­ies.

“At least 15 peo­ple mostly civil­ians died in the blast,” Ma­jor Hus­sein Nur, a mil­i­tary of­fi­cial, told Reuters. “We do not know the ex­act fig­ure of ca­su­al­ties. All the peo­ple on board the ru­ined minibus per­ished. Sol­diers and other pri­vate se­cu­rity guards also died,” he said. A packed minibus car­ry­ing civil­ian pas­sen­gers was com­pletely de­stroyed in the at­tack, rais­ing fears of a climb­ing death toll.

The mil­i­tant ex­trem­ist group Al-Shabaab has claimed re­spon­si­bil­ity for the at­tack. The group has vowed to fight the in­ter­na­tion­ally backed gov­ern­ment and has launched reg­u­lar at­tacks against both gov­ern­ment and civil­ian in­stal­la­tions in the past.

The at­tack comes on the heels of an ul­ti­ma­tum is­sued by the So­mali Pres­i­dent Mo­hamed Ab­dul­lahi Far­majo de­mand­ing Al-Shabaab fight­ers turn them­selves in within the net 60 days or “face con­se­quences”. The So­mali Pres­i­dent has spo­ken tough about the mil­i­tant in­sur­gency group be­fore.