A Somali woman reacts as victims from a car bombing attack are brought to the Madina Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia on Saturday. Photo: AFP

The death toll from a massive car bomb in the Somali capital has risen to 81, a government spokesperson said Monday, as rescue workers pursued their search for the missing.

The bombing on Saturday at a busy intersection in Mogadishu was the country's deadliest attack in two years.

No one has claimed responsibility, though President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed blamed Islamist group Al-Shabaab, which has regularly carried out car bombings and other attacks as part of its decade-long bid to topple the internationally backed government.

"The overall number of the dead stands at 81 currently. Two more people died from their injuries," Ismail Muktar, a spokesman for Somalia's information ministry, told AFP.

One of the new fatalities was among the injured who had been evacuated to Turkey via a Turkish military plane on Sunday, Muktar said. 

Some 125 people were injured in Saturday's blast, a caseload that has overwhelmed health facilities in Mogadishu. 

At least 16 of those killed were students from the capital's private Banadir University, who had been traveling on a bus when the car bomb detonated. 

The attack was the biggest to hit Somalia since a truck exploded in 2017 near a fuel tanker in Mogadishu, creating a fireball that killed over 500 people.