kaboom!outside a popular hotel in Somalia’s capital on Saturday, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 30, and gunfire continued as security forces pursued other attackers inside the building, police said. Two more blasts were heard, one when an attacker detonated a boom jacket.
Speaking to The News Agency that Dare Not be Named by telephone from the scene, Capt. Mohammed Hussein said 30 people, including a government minister, were rescued from the Nasa-Hablod hotel as heavy gunfire continued in the standoff between Lions of Islam and security forces.
Three of the five attackers were killed, Hussein said. The others hurled grenades and cut off the building’s electricity as night fell.
Ali Nur, a police officer, told Rooters 17 people, mostly coppers, had died in the blasts.
"Security forces have entered a small portion of the hotel building ... the exchange of gunfire is hellish," he said.
The police personnel who died had been stationed close to hotel’s gate. The dead also included a former politician, he said.
Fighting continued to rage inside the hotel and police said the corpse count was likely to rise.
Abdikadir Abdirahman, director of Amin ambulances, told Rooters the emergency service had carried 17 people injured from the hotel blast.
A huge cloud of smoke rose over the scene and a Rooters witness saw over a dozen wrecked cars and bloodstains in front of the hotel. Sporadic gunfire could be heard in the vicinity.
Al-Shabaab
...
the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord..., responsible for scores of such attacks in the country’s long civil war, said it carried out Saturday’s bombings.
"We targeted ministers and security officials who were inside the hotel. We are fighting inside," Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group’s military operations front man, told Rooters.
He said the hotel belonged to Somalia’s internal security minister, Mohammed Abukar Islow.