Somalia on Saturday took a step toward electing a new president after a committee overseeing the war-torn country's transition to a replacement government named more than 200 parliamentarians.

The legislature is due to elect the next president on Monday under a U.N.-backed agreement, putting an end to eight years of Somalia's graft-riddled, Western-backed Transitional Federal Government, or TFG.

A car bomb went off Monday in Somalia's volatile capital Mogadishu, killing a former trade minister and wounding six people nearby, officials said.

"The driver who died in the car bomb was Mohammed Abdinur Garweyne, he was a former trade minister and a lawmaker," said Mohamed Dhere, another lawmaker.

A suicide bomber attacked a military base housing African Union soldiers and Somali troops on Saturday about 30 kilometers from the capital Mogadishu, a Somali military official told Agence France Presse.

"There was a suicide attack on a military camp in Afgoye, where we are getting initial reports that a car laden with explosives was detonated near Bar Osmail military base, but we have no details so far," Abdukadir Mohamed said.

Funky dancing in a seaside bar, Vespa scooters on elegant, broad boulevards: the faded images of a lost Somalia and its ancient capital are at odds with a place now better known for famine and war.

Those who dare to visit contemporary Mogadishu, often dubbed the world's most dangerous capital, catch only a glimpse of its vanished beauty in the bullet-scarred wasteland devastated by more than two decades of civil war.

Al-Qaida-linked Somali militants vowed Saturday to intensify the war against government and African Union troops, despite the fall of their key stronghold of Afgoye, the latest in a string of military losses.

"God willing we will continue the war and we will win the battle without doubt," said Sheik Abdiaziz Abu Musab, spokesman for the hardline Shebab, a day after AU and Somali troops entered Afgoye, a former strategic rebel base.

Love-struck teenagers, angry parents, rowing couples: Somali youth tired of seeing their homeland portrayed as a war-torn famine zone have started making films to show a different side to their country.

"The world knows Somalia for war," said Adirahman Ali Suge, a 19-year-old writer and film director, part of a group of refugee Somali film makers in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. "But we have love stories and drama to tell too."

A mortar shell fired into a crowded Mogadishu neighborhood has killed seven civilians, including two children, witnesses said Tuesday, as continued violence threatens Somalia's fragile peace process.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling late Monday, the latest in a string of attacks in the anarchic capital, where diehard al-Qaida allied Shebab insurgents have launched guerrilla assaults on the government.

A young woman strapped with explosives blew herself up Wednesday at a ceremony in the Somali national theatre attended by the prime minister and other officials, killing at least two.

She detonated her suicide belt as Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali was on a podium addressing 200 people gathered to mark the first anniversary of the country's satellite TV network, an Agence France Presse reporter who witnessed the incident said.

A car bomb exploded in Somalia's war-torn capital Mogadishu on Wednesday, wounding at least one security officer in the latest in a spate of insurgent attacks, officials said.

"Security forces foiled a car bomb attack intended to kill innocent civilians," said Abidweli Said, a police official. "One security officer who had sealed off the road to inspect the car was injured."

Somalia's al-Qaida allied Shebab insurgents fired mortars at the presidential palace in the capital overnight, killing six civilians in a camp for displaced people nearby.

The hardline Islamist group said its salvo of "midnight mortar attacks" were targeted at the palace, and boasted of killing African Union and government soldiers.