Security forces personnel at the scene of a car bomb attack and armed raid by Shebaab militants on the Maka al Mukarama hotel in Mogadishu.

Reuters/AFP/Mogadishu

Islamist militants blasted their way into a popular hotel in the Somali capital Mogadishu yesterday, killing at least seven people and trapping government officials inside, police and witnesses said.
Somali special forces broke through the compound wall and exchanged gunfire with fighters holed up in the main building of the Maka Al Mukaram hotel, said police.
Al Qaeda-linked group Shebaab, which has also launched gun and bomb attacks in neighbouring Kenya and other countries, said its followers were responsible.
The hotel is considered a high-security facility and frequented by politicians, diplomats and businessmen.
“There was an explosion outside and gunmen stormed the hotel. There is shooting inside. We don’t know how many dead there are,” police official Ahmed Abdi Fatah told AFP.
He added that some government officials were also believed to have been wounded in the attack, and that security forces had surrounded the hotel.
The sound of gunfire and small explosions could be heard coming from inside, AFP reporters said.
“The hotel is now fully under the control of the militants,” Major Ismail Olow, a Mogadishu police officer at the scene, told Reuters. “Shebaab fighters are on the top of the building and inside the hotel. It is not easy for us to go in.”
The remains of two destroyed cars could be seen at the gates of the hotel which was surrounded by police.
Officers said a unit of elite US-trained special forces troops known as “Gaashaan” (Shield) had breached the hotel compound but were still trying to enter the building.
“The militants fired as government forces tried to enter the hotel rooms. They are sporadically exchanging gunfire,” Captain Ali Hussein, a police officer, told Reuters.
Shebaab was pushed out of the capital by African peacekeeping forces in 2011, but has kept up guerrilla-style attacks, looking to overthrow the government and impose its strict version of Shariah on the country.
An offensive launched last year by African Union forces along with the Somali army has driven the group out of its strongholds in central and southern Somalia, while a series of US drone strikes have killed some of its top leaders.
Shebaab said they were still fighting inside the hotel.
“There is much casualty but we shall give details later,” the group’s military spokesman Sheikh Abdulaziz Abu Musab told Reuters.
“The Mujahedeen fighters are conducting an operation targeting the heads of the apostates in Mogadishu. Our special forces have stormed a hotel where senior officials were meeting,” he added.
The Shebaab, meaning “youth” in Arabic, emerged out of bitter insurgency against Ethiopia, whose troops entered Somalia in a 2006 US-backed invasion to topple the Islamic Courts Union that was then controlling the capital Mogadishu.
Shebaab rebels continue to stage frequent attacks, seeking to counter claims that they are close to defeat due to the loss of territory in the face of an AU and Somali government offensive, regular US drone strikes against their leaders and defections.
The group have also carried out a string of revenge attacks in neighbouring countries – including the September 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital Nairobi which left at least 67 dead.
Somalia has been unstable since the collapse of Siad Barre’s hardline regime in 1991, and the country’s new government is being supported by a 22,000-strong African Union force that includes troops from Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.


Related Story