A suicide car bomber has crashed his vehicle into a gate outside a hotel in the Somali capital, and the attack was followed by gunfire, killing at least 15 people including two members of parliament, police said.
Al-Shabab fighters claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack targeting Mogadishu’s Ambassador Hotel, which is frequented by diplomats, government officials and Somalis visiting from abroad. The two politicians killed in the attack were identified by the police as Mohamud Mohamed and Abdullahi Jamac. Both victims lived in the hotel. At least 20 other people were wounded.
“We attacked the hotel with a car bomb and we went inside,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, Al-Shabaab’s military operations spokesman, told the Reuters news agency. Fighting was still going on as of 19:00 GMT on Wednesday, and sources told Al Jazeera two suspects were still holed up at the top floor of the hotel. Authorities also said the suspects could be armed with suicide vests and may be holding hostages. Earlier reports said special forces have taken control of the hotel. But a Reuters reporter and residents said they could still hear sporadic gunfire.
Mogadishu police said some fighters had apparently burst into the hotel. Sources told Al Jazeera that at least three fighters were involved in the attack. The attack happened shortly before the arrival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Mogadishu. Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow, reporting from Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya, said Ambassador Hotel is located along the road Erdogan “was supposed to take from the airport to the presidential palace”.
Adow also reported that the attack “has the signature of Al-Shabaab”, adding that it was not the first time the hotel, popular with politicians, was targeted: “They want to send a message that although they might have lost control of the city, they can still carry out such attacks with audacity,” he said.
In February, at least nine people were killed when Al-Shabaab fighters set off a car bomb at the gate of a popular park near a hotel in the capital. In January, an attack on a beach-front restaurant killed at least 17 people. In recent attacks, the armed fighters have also taken civilians as “legitimate targets”, Al Jazeera’s Adow said.
Al-Shabaab, which seeks to topple Somalia’s government, was driven out of Mogadishu by the African Union force AMISOM in 2011, and last year was ousted from strongholds elsewhere in the south by AMISOM and the Somali National Army.