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VOA - World News

The death toll from Sunday’s attack and subsequent hours-long siege at a beachfront hotel in Somalia has risen to at least 15.  The al-Shabab militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.   

Officials and witnesses told VOA Somali that just before 6 p.m. local time, a suicide car bomb exploded outside the Elite Hotel at Mogadishu’s popular Lido Beach. Moments later four armed gunmen stormed the hotel.    

Security forces arrived at the scene immediately after the attack began and took over from hotel guards the responsibility for ousting the attackers.     

Ismail Mukhtar, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Information, said all four of the attackers who stormed the hotel were shot dead.      

Paramedics and civilians carry an injured person on a stretcher at Madina hospital after a blast at the Elite Hotel in Lido beach in Mogadishu, Somalia, Aug. 16, 2020.

Troops rescued more than 200 people from the hotel, including the owner, Abdullahi Mohamed Nur, a lawmaker and former minister.  At least 18 people were injured.    

The head of the Somali journalists’ union, Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimuu, was among the witnesses sitting outside the Elite Hotel when the explosion occurred.   

He told VOA Somali that he arrived at the hotel 15 minutes before the explosion along with his friend Abdirazak Abdi Abdullahi, who works for the state-controlled radio station. Abdullahi was killed by the militants after the first gunshots were fired, Moalimuu said. 

Al-Shabab is an al-Qaida-affiliated group that has been carrying out attacks in Somalia, targeting civilian and government installations. The group has lost control of almost all of the major towns to the Somali government and African Union forces but still controls large parts in the countryside and is capable of carrying out deadly attacks.