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Somalia: Islamic extremists attack hotel in capital, kill 9
Deadly attack: A Somali policeman runs through the wreckage outside the Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, Sunday
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Deadly attack: A Somali policeman runs through the wreckage outside the Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, Sunday. A Somali police officer says an explosion followed by heavy gunfire has been heard, thought to have been caused by a suicide car bomb, at the hotel often frequented by Somali government officials and business executives. (AP/Farah Abdi Warsameh) (AP/Farah Abdi Warsameh)
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span class="inline inline-center">Deadly attack: A Somali policeman runs through the wreckage outside the Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, Sunday. A Somali police officer says an explosion followed by heavy gunfire has been heard, thought to have been caused by a suicide car bomb, at the hotel often frequented by Somali government officials and business executives. (AP/Farah Abdi Warsameh)
Somalia's Islamic extremists attacked a hotel at dawn Sunday in the capital, Mogadishu, killing at least nine people and injuring 10, a police official said.
Security forces ended the siege by al-Shabab attackers at the Sahafi Hotel by midday, said police commander Ali Ahmed.
"It's over now, we have killed all the attackers." said Ahmed. "They came under cover of darkness and attacked the hotel while some of the guards were sleeping."
The attack started at daybreak when a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle laden with explosives at the gate of the Sahafi Hotel and then gunmen ran into the hotel and shot at people, police Capt. Mohamed Hussein said.
"They have killed the owner of the hotel, a former military general, and other officials during the attack," Hussein said by phone.
A second explosion came from a car bomb outside the hotel, said witnesses.
Al-Shabab, the Islamic extremist rebels waging an insurgency against Somalia's weak U.N.- backed government, claimed responsibility for the attack on the group's radio station, Andulus. The fighters infiltrated the hotel, Sheikh Abdiaziz Abu-Musab, al-Shabab's military spokesman, told the radio station.
Somali troops and African Union forces went to the scene and took control of the hotel, according to a Twitter post by the African Union Mission in Somalia, which has deployed troops to bolster Somalia's government against al-Shabab's insurgency.
One photographer was among those killed and another was injured, according to witnesses.
"I was at the scene of the explosion busy taking photos when a vehicle full of explosives exploded beside me. I fell on the ground and saw part of my body bleeding, I was with another journalist who was killed in the attack," said Feisal Omar, who has since been discharged from the Mogadishu hospital.
The Sahafi Hotel is often frequented by Somali government officials and business executives and it has been targeted before. Two French security advisers were abducted from the hotel by militants in 2009.
Despite being forced out of Mogadishu and many other cities and towns across Somalia, al Shabab continues to launch lethal attacks in the capital and elsewhere. Al-Shabab is fighting to oust the Mogadishu government and install a strict version of Shariah law. Al-Shabab have also attacked neighboring countries that have sent troops to support the Mogadishu government. The extremist rebels killed 148 people in an attack on a college in Garissa, Kenya in April.
The latest attack was condemned by Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
"This is the action of an increasingly desperate, internally-divided group of extremists ... (who) seek to grab the headlines through killing innocent Muslims."
Mohamud urged Somalians "to prevent extremists from distorting the faith of our fathers, and leading people astray in their quest for brutality and destruction. We must do this by confronting their warped ideology and liberating Somalia from them entirely."
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AP journalist Mohamed Sheikh Nor contributed to this report from Mogadishu (**)
