Somalia: truck bomb kills 70

At least 70 people were killed and more than 40 others injured in Somalia Tuesday when Islamist militants blew up a truck in front of the education ministry in the capital, Mogadishu, a rescue official told the Associated Press.

This was the largest attack in Mogadishu since August, when the militant group called al Shabab withdrew most of its forces from the capital. A police officer in Mogadishu, Ali Hussein, told the AP that the truck stopped at a security checkpoint and then blew up.

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"After the thunderous blast, blackened corpses were sprawled on the debris-strewn street amid burning vehicles. Uniformed soldiers dragged the wounded from the hellish scene," it states.

Students had gathered at the ministry to take exams, MSNBC reports, and the government said in a statement that most of the casualties were students and parents.

Al-Shabab, which has links to Al Qaeda, has increasingly used suicide bombings as it works to gain more control in the Horn of Africa.

In addition to suffering from militant attacks, Somalia has been struggling to contain a famine that has devastated much of southern Somalia.

GlobalPost's Tristan McConnell reported last month that, according to the United Nations, tens of thousands of people have already died, hundreds more are dying every day and 750,000 are facing starvation.