According to the Somali police, six civilians and three members of the security forces were killed and ten civilians injured in the attack on a hotel in Mogadishu by a commando of radical Islamists Shebab on Friday night after a six-hour siege.
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“Six civilians died in the attack […] and ten others were injured. Three courageous members of the security forces were also killed,” the police said in a statement, which said 84 people who were staying at the Pearl Beach Hotel were rescued and unharmed.
The attack, claimed by al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militants, began just before 20:00 (1700 GMT) on Friday when seven attackers stormed the Pearl Beach Hotel on the coast of Mogadishu.
It ended around 2am after gunfire exchanges between police and the attackers, police said, killing everyone.
“The security forces managed to rescue 84 people, including women, children and the elderly,” the statement said.
Al-Shabaab has been waging an insurgency against the internationally-backed federal government for more than 15 years and has frequently targeted hotels that normally house high-ranking Somali and foreign officials.
On Friday evening, witnesses contacted by AFP reported violent shooting near the facility. Several ambulances were parked nearby, an AFP journalist noted.
“I was near the Pearl Beach restaurant when a loud explosion was heard in front of the building,” witness Abdirahim Ali told AFP. “I was able to escape, but then there were violent shots and the security forces moved in in large numbers.”
A “total war”
Yaasin Nur, who was nearby, said the hotel’s restaurant “was full of people as it had recently been renovated.”
In August 2020, the Shebabs launched a full-scale attack on the Elite, another hotel on the Lido beach, killing ten civilians and a police officer. It took security forces four hours to regain control of the facility.
The Shebab, allied with al-Qaeda, who are calling for the introduction of Islamic law in the country, have been fighting the German government for more than fifteen years with the support of the international community.
After being expelled from the country’s capitals in 2011 and 2012, they remain firmly established in vast rural areas.
Somali President Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud declared “total war” on them and launched a military offensive in September, supported in particular by American airstrikes.
Yet the Shebab continue to launch bloody retaliatory attacks, underscoring their ability to strike at the heart of Somali cities and military installations.
On May 26, they attacked a base in the south of the country held by Ugandan soldiers from the African Union Force in Somalia (Atmis), killing at least 54 soldiers.
On October 29, 2022, two car bombs exploded in Mogadishu, killing 121 and injuring 333. It was the deadliest attack in five years in a country also hit by a historic drought.
A triple bomb blast in Beledweyne (centre) in early October also killed 30 people, including local officials, and a 30-hour siege in August killed at least 21 guests at a Mogadishu hotel.
The siege had raised questions about how Islamist militants managed to slip undetected into the heavily guarded heart of Mogadishu Governorate.
In a report to the UN Security Council in February, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres claimed that 2022 was the deadliest year for civilians in Somalia since 2017, largely due to attacks by al-Shabaab.