MOGADISHU, Somalia: The security forces in Somalia have brought to an end the siege of a hotel in the capital Mogadishu, claimed state media on Saturday, after the Islamist Al-Shabab group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The rebels, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, have been waging an insurgency against the internationally-backed federal government for more than 15 years and have often targeted hotels, which tend to host high-ranking foreign and Somali officials.
The security forces “shot and killed” rebels who carried out “the desperate terrorist attack on the Pearl Beach… in Mogadishu,” SNTV reported on Saturday. It added that security forces had rescued “many civilians from inside the hotel” and “shot and killed” those responsible, Arab News quoted AFP as having reported.
The security and intelligence sources, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, confirmed the end of the attack. Witnesses reported hearing explosions and gunfire at the hotel on Lido beach. “I was near the Pearl Beach restaurant when [a] heavy explosion occurred in front of the building,” witness Abdirahim Ali said.
“I have managed to flee but there was heavy gunfire afterwards and the security forces rushed to the area.”
Yaasin Nur was at the restaurant and said it was “full of people as it was recently renovated.”
“I’m worried because there are several of my colleagues who went there and two of them are not responding to their phones,” he added. Several ambulances were also parked nearby, an AFP journalist saw.
Al-Shabab has been driven out of Somalia’s main towns and cities but retains power in large parts of rural areas and continues to carry out attacks against civilian targets and security, including in the capital.
In August 2020, Al-Shabab launched a large-scale attack on the ‘Elite’, another hotel at Lido Beach popular with officials, killing 10 civilians and a police officer. It took security forces four hours to regain control over the site.
The latest attack at Lido Beach highlights the endemic security problems in the Horn of Africa country as it struggles to emerge from decades of conflict and natural disasters.
Last year, Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud launched an “all-out war” against Al-Shabab, rallying Somalis to help flush out members of the jihadist group he described as “bedbugs.”
His pledge came after 21 people were killed and 117 others were injured in an Al-Shabab siege on a Mogadishu hotel in August 2022 that lasted 30 hours. The attack raised serious questions about the security forces, who failed to protect a heavily guarded administrative district.
In October 2022, twin car bombings in capital Mogadishu killed 121 people and injured 333, in the country’s deadliest attack in five years.
The army and militias known as “macawisley” have in recent months retaken swathes of territory in the center of the country in an operation backed by the African Union mission ATMIS and US air strikes. But Al-Shabab fighters killed 54 Ugandan peacekeepers in an attack on an African Union base in the southern town of Bulo Marer in May.
