Government spokesman Ismael Mukhtar added that university students were among the dead.
The attacker drove his vehicle into the "Ex-control Afgoye" checkpoint, a well-known junction that links the south of Somalia to the capital, Mukhtar told CNN.
Earlier, Mukhtar said the blast also injured at least 60 others.
The attack happened during rush hour in the Somali capital at about 8 a.m. local time, and both civilians and soldiers are among the dead, police say.
Police conduct security searches at the checkpoint, but there is also a taxation office located nearby and the area is heavily populated with civilians and security forces.
Police have warned that the death toll could rise as many of the wounded have been rushed to hospitals.
Two Turkish citizens were among the dead, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu confirmed shortly after the attack.
"May Allah's mercy be upon our 2 citizens and innocent Somali brothers&sisters who lost their lives in the heinous terrorist attack," Çavuşoğlu wrote on his Twitter account. He added Turkey would continue to stand with Somalia in the fight against terror.
Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the attack. Since 2006, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated terror group has carried out repeated attacks in Mogadishu against different targets -- killing international aid workers, journalists, civilian leaders and peacekeepers -- as well as Somalia's government and military targets.
It wants to turn Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Two weeks ago, at least five people were killed after the group attacked a hotel popular with lawmakers and security officials in the Somali capital.
Journalist Omar Nor reported from Mogadishu. CNN's Raja Razek and Sharif Paget in Atlanta and Lauren Said-Moorhouse in London also contributed to this report.
MOGADISHU, Somalia — A truck bomb exploded at a busy security checkpoint in Somalia's capital Saturday morning, killing at least 61 people, authorities said. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Mogadishu in recent memory.
The toll was likely to rise as scores of people were rushed to hospitals, government spokesman Ismail Mukhtar told The Associated Press. Abdiqadir Abdirahman, the director of the Aamin Ambulance service, confirmed the 61 dead and said more than 50 others were wounded.
Mayor Omar Mohamud Mohamed, speaking at the scene, said university students were among those killed. Police said the dead also included two Turkish nationals.
A civilian who was wounded in suicide car bomb attack is helped at check point in Mogadishu, Somalia, Saturday, Dec, 28, 2019. (Associated Press)
Capt. Mohamed Hussein said the blast targeted a tax collection center during the morning rush hour as Somalia returned to work after its weekend. Images from the scene showed the mangled frames of vehicles and bodies lying on the ground.
A large black plume of smoke rose above the capital.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab often carries out such attacks. The extremist group was pushed out of Mogadishu several years ago but continues to target high-profile areas such as checkpoints and hotels in the seaside city.
Medical personnel carry a civilian who was wounded in suicide car bomb attack at check point in Mogadishu, Somalia, Saturday, Dec, 28, 2019. (Associated Press)
Al-Shabab was blamed for a devastating truck bombing in Mogadishu in October 2017 that killed more than 500 people. The group never claimed responsibility for the blast that led to widespread public outrage. Some analysts said al-Shabab didn't dare claim credit as its strategy of trying to sway public opinion by exposing government weakness had badly backfired.
The latest attack again raises concern about the readiness of Somali forces to take over responsibility for the Horn of Africa country's security in the coming months from an African Union force.
Al-Shabab, the target of a growing number of U.S. airstrikes since President Donald Trump took office, controls parts of Somalia's southern and central regions. It funds itself with a “taxation” system that experts describe as extortion of businesses and travelers that brings in millions of dollars a year.
Survivors of Friday's Kazakhstan plane crash have described the aircraft's struggle to get airborne before the accident that killed at least 12 people, including the pilot.
The Bek Air Fokker 100 jet, with 98 people on board, crashed shortly after takeoff after departing from Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, on its way to capital Nur-Sultan, according to officials.
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A survivor told Kazakh news website Tengrinews she heard a "terrifying sound" before the plane started losing altitude.
"The plane was flying at a tilt. Everything was like in a movie: screaming, shouting, people crying," she said.
Another survivor, Aslan Nazaraliyev, told Reuters News Agency: "The plane tilted to the left, then to the right, then it started shaking while still trying to gain altitude."
Nazaraliyev said he had been seated next to an emergency exit in row 15 and all the rows in front of him were torn off when the plane broke in half on impact.
"We got out through the emergency exit ... I and other men started getting people out and away from the plane. Some were trapped by concrete debris from the building. There were moans and screams and it was dark."
One of those killed, electrician Abai Nurbekov, was on the plane with his family of six, news website The Village reported. His wife and four children remained in intensive care.
In Almaty, residents flooded a local blood donation centre.
Authorities cordoned off the crash site in the village of Almerek, just beyond the end of the runway.
At the airport in Nur-Sultan, relatives of the passengers - some of whom were going to join their families for the holidays - were being briefed on their fate and offered flights to Almaty.
Black box
Tengrinews cited Berik Kamaliev, Kazakhstan's vice minister of industry and infrastructure development, as saying that the plane's black box was recovered from the site and it would be handed over to Moscow for decryption.
"Flight recorders were recovered. Tomorrow we will send a black box for decryption to the interstate aviation committee in the city of Moscow. On Monday, the work will begin," Kamaliev said at a news briefing in Nur-Sultan.
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"Those responsible will face tough punishment in accordance with the law," Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev tweeted, expressing condolences to the victims and their families. He also ordered an audit of all Kazakh airlines.
Tokayev declared December 28 a national day of mourning and appointed Prime Minister Askar Mamin to head a commission to investigate the crash.
Mamin's office said the commission will report preliminary findings by January 10.
The government promised to pay families of the deceased about $10,000 each.
The crashed plane was built in 1996, the government said, and its most recent flight certificate was issued in May 2019.
Bek Air, a low-cost carrier, made headlines in 2016 when one of its Fokkers had to land on its rear wheels after its landing gear failed to deploy fully.
The same year, the airline successfully challenged aviation authorities' plans to make the International Air Transport Association operational safety audit mandatory for all local carriers on the grounds that such a move required changes to law rather than just government regulations.
The government promised to pay families of the dead about $10,000 each [Kazakhstan's emergencies committee/AFP]
An American defense contractor was killed in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk on Friday, the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State said in a statement. Several U.S. service members and Iraqi personnel were wounded.
The contractor's name has not been released.
Colonel Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, said Iraqi security forces were leading the investigation and response to the attack.
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No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Such attacks have taken place on several occasions over the past few months, with U.S. officials for the most part blaming Iran-backed fighters. In November, a barrage of Katyusha rockets targeted an Iraqi air base that houses American troops south of the city of Mosul on Friday
The Iraqi military said earlier Friday that several rockets were launched into Iraq's K1 military base, which houses U.S. and Iraqi forces, according to Reuters.
Iraq has been roiled since October 1 by protests that have left more than 450 people dead, the vast majority of them demonstrators killed by security forces firing tear gas and live ammunition. The mass uprisings prompted the resignation of former Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi late last month.
The tail of the doomed plane that crashed in Kazakhstan — leaving 12 people dead and dozens injured — touched the runway twice during takeoff, indicating that it struggled to gain altitude, the country’s deputy prime minister said.
Flight Z2100, a Fokker 100 plane operated by Kazakh budget carrier Bek Air, was scheduled to fly from Almaty, the country’s largest city, to the capital Nur-Sultan when it crashed seconds after takeoff.
Authorities are looking at whether pilot error or technical failure were factors in the crash, Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar said at a press conference in Almaty.
“Most of the passengers who died were in the front part,” he said, adding that the airport was “in an ideal condition” at the time of the crash.
The plane “lost altitude after takeoff and broke through a concrete fence,” before hitting a two-story building about 7:20 a.m., local time Friday, according to the Almaty airport authority.
The country’s emergencies committee released a list of 12 people who died, revising down earlier tolls. Officials said 53 people were injured, including nine children, adding that 10 adults were in critical condition.
Among the dead were the captain, Marat Muratbayev, as well as Rustam Kaidarov, a 79-year-old retired general and 35-year-old Dana Kruglova, a journalist from the private Informburo news agency, according to Agence France-Presse.
Informburo said Kruglova “had wanted to celebrate the New Year with her parents in Nur-Sultan and decided to take this flight”.
A well-known entrepreneur, Aslan Nazaraliyev, posted on Facebook that he had survived right next to where the plane had split into two. “Thanks to Allah, I am alive and well,” Nazaraliyev wrote.
“At first the left wing jolted really hard, then the right. The plane continued to gain altitude, shaking quite severely, and then went down,” Nazaraliyev told The Associated Press by phone.
A survivor told news website Tengrinews that she heard a “terrifying sound” before the aircraft started losing altitude.
“The plane was flying at a tilt. Everything was like in a movie: screaming, shouting, people crying,” she said, according to Reuters.
Government officials said the plane underwent deicing before the flight, but Nazaraliyev recalled that the wings were covered in ice, and that passengers who used emergency exits over the wings slipped and fell.
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.AP
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev pledged to provide families of the victims with compensation and said that those responsible “will be severely punished in accordance with the law.”
Meanwhile, all Bek Air and Fokker 100 flights in Kazakhstan were suspended pending the investigation, authorities said.
In 2009, all Kazakh airlines except the flagship carrier Air Astana were banned from operating in the European Union because they didn’t meet international safety standards. The ban was lifted only in 2016.
The twin-turbofan Fokker 100 that crashed Friday was reported to be 23 years old and was most recently certified to operate in May.
The company manufacturing the plane went bankrupt in 1996 and the production of the Fokker 100 stopped the following year.
On March 27, 2016, a Bek Air flight carrying 116 passengers and five crew members from Kazakhstan’s Kzyl-Orda airport made an emergency landing at Astana airport, according to the Aviation Safety Network, a website run by the nonprofit Flight Safety Foundation. There were no injuries or fatalities.
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
EPA
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
EPA
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
TASS/Sipa USA
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
EPA
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
EPA
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
EPA
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
EPA
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
EPA
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan's emergencies committ
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
AFP via Getty Images
Rescuers work at the air crash site near Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Israeli Prime Minister won a decisive victory to remain the leader of the Likud Party — and he's now promising more concessions from the U.S., as Israel prepares to hold a general election in March.
Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be his party's leader when Israel holds a national election in March, after notching a landslide victory in the Likud Party primary Thursday. Netanyahu had faced a rare challenger in Likud's primary race, but he secured more than 70% of the vote.
"A huge win!" Netanyahu said via Twitter. He also promised to take Likud and Israel to great new achievements. Some of them hinge on new concessions from the U.S., where the Trump administration has broken with decades of precedents by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the U.S. Embassy to the city.
In a victory speech after Thursday's vote, Netanyahu promised more gains to his conservative base.
"We will set our final borders, bring about American recognition for Israeli control over Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and our sovereignty over every settlement in Judea and Samaria," Netanyahu said, according to The Jerusalem Post. He added that his government will "obtain a defense pact with U.S. that will ensure Israeli freedom to act, we will defeat Iran and achieve a peace pact with Arab countries."
Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, will run for reelection despite problems that range from his own legal troubles to his party's failure to secure a majority in parliament in September's election.
The prime minister faces several criminal charges, helping to fuel recent gains by the rival Blue and White Party and its centrist leader, Benny Gantz. And those issues don't seem likely to fade away: Netanyahu was indicted on bribery and other charges last month.
Gantz issued a statement Friday calling for Israel to "set out on a new, clean path under Blue and White's leadership." The alternative, he said, is to "stay stuck in a place with a sitting prime minister facing three charges of corruption, fraud and breach of trust, who is placing his own personal interest above the best interests of Israel's citizens."
Neither Netanyahu nor Gantz was able to broker a ruling coalition after a very close vote in autumn. And with Israel in political gridlock, the country will hold its third election in the span of a year.
While those concerns didn't change the opinion of Likud voters who see Netanyahu as their best chance to regain control, there are also warning signs for the prime minister in Thursday's results.
"Netanyahu had a resounding victory with 72.5% of the votes," NPR's Daniel Estrin reports from Jerusalem. "But voter turnout in his party primaries was only about 50% — and more than a quarter of the voters didn't choose Netanyahu. That could mean Netanyahu will have a hard time getting enough right-wing voters to come to the polls to help him win national elections in March."
