Capt Mohamed Hussein said that a burst of gunfire could be heard on Sunday inside the Elite Hotel. (Representational image)

A Somalia police officer says a car bomb went off at a beachside hotel in Mogadishu, the capital, followed by heavy gunfire.

Capt Mohamed Hussein said that a burst of gunfire could be heard on Sunday inside the Elite Hotel, a newly built beachside hotel often frequented by young people and the city’s elite.

There was no immediate word on casualties from the attack which shattered a period of calm of a few months following a spate of bomb attacks earlier this year. Somalia’s homegrown Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, who are allied to al-Qaida, often carry out such attacks in the country’s capital.