The blast happened near the entrance of Weheliye hotel on the busy Maka Almukarramah road, Captain Mohamed Hussein said. The hotel was left intact, but the explosion damaged a nearby house.
Hours before, a minibus exploded after police shot at it after it refused to stop as it approached a checkpoint in the capital, police officer Nur Osman said, adding that two people were wounded.
“A policeman at a check point shot at the speeding mini-bus. It exploded and killed the al Shabaab fighter that drove it," he said, Al Jazeera reported.
Somalia's new Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire condemned the two attacks, saying they were carried out by "bloodthirsty groups."
No one has claimed responsibility for today's explosions in Mogadishu. In the past al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab have claimed responsibility for gun, grenade and bomb attacks in Somalia, and tends to focus on Mogadishu and other regions controlled by the federal government.