No fewer than three people have been confirmed dead following an attack in a hotel in southern Somalia on Sunday, police and a witness have revealed.
A police officer whose name was given as Abdullahi Ismail told reporters that; ‘Terrorist attackers stormed Hotel Tawakal this afternoon and there is ongoing fighting inside the building now between the security forces and the terrorists’.
‘There are fatalities and three civilians were confirmed dead but it is very difficult to say the exact number of the casualties now.’
“This is not a government target, It is just an ordinary, civilian-frequented hotel’, he added.
A witness whose name was given as Farhan Hassan said: ‘A suicide bomber drove a vehicle onto the entrance of the hotel before the gunmen entered the building.’
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He further added that; ‘Shooting started inside and it looks (like) the gunmen were randomly shooting people inside.”
‘I saw the dead bodies of three people recovered near the main entrance but we don’t know the number of those who may have been killed inside.’
Hassan said gunfire could still be heard inside the hotel.
Africa Today News, New York had recently reported that Somalia’s new government has appointed a former al-Shabab militant, who was once involved in fighting against the authorities into the cabinet, but the weekend’s deadly hotel siege is a reminder of the tough task for those in power.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that back in May when Somalia’s new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud took office, he had declared that a top priority was bringing an end to the country’s 15-year Islamist insurgency.
Three months down the line, al-Shabab staged one of its most spectacular ever attacks, storming a hotel a short drive away from the presidential palace in the capital, Mogadishu.
They held it for 30 hours. Officials said more than 20 people died in the siege of the Hayat and 117 were injured.
No fewer than a month earlier, the group went on to mount an unprecedented invasion of neighbouring Ethiopia.
It was as if they were cocking a snook at the new president.