Security forces patrol near the Hayat Hotel after an attack by radical Chabab Islamists in Mogadishu August 20, 2022. HASSAN ALI ELMI / AFP
At least eight civilians were killed in clashes between radical Chabab Islamists who attacked a Mogadishu hotel in the Somali capital on Friday night, August 19, and security forces trying to neutralize them.
“Security forces continued to neutralize the terrorists who were surrounded in a room of the hotel building, most people were rescued but at least eight civilians are confirmed dead at this time,” said Mohamed Abdikadir, a Somali security official, on Saturday morning.
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Jihadists stormed the popular Hayat Hotel on Friday night, in an exchange of gunfire and explosions with security forces. “Security forces rescued dozens of civilians, including children, trapped in the building,” Abdikadir added.
Explosion by a suicide bomber
The attackers were still holed up at the hotel early Saturday, and sporadic gunfire and loud explosions could be heard in the area. Somali police spokesman Abdifatah Adan Hassan told reporters the blast was caused by a suicide bomber.
Witnesses said a second blast occurred minutes after the first, killing rescuers, security personnel and civilians who rushed to the hotel after the first blast.
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An Islamist group with ties to al-Qaeda, the Shabab, which has been involved in an insurgency against the Somali federal government for the past fifteen years, has claimed responsibility for the attack. “A group of Chabab attackers has entered the Hayat Hotel in Mogadishu, the fighters are shooting indiscriminately inside the hotel,” the group confirmed in a brief statement on a Prochabab website.
Biggest attack since May’s presidential election
It is the largest attack in the Somali capital since President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud was elected in May. Al-Shabaab were driven out of the country’s main cities, including Mogadishu, in 2011, but remain entrenched in large rural areas. In recent months, they have stepped up their attacks.
On Wednesday, the US Army announced it had killed 13 Chabab militias in an airstrike who were attacking regular Somali armed forces soldiers in a remote area of that Horn of Africa country. The strike was carried out near Teedaan, about 300 kilometers north of the capital Mogadishu, according to a statement by the American military command in Africa (Africom).
The United States has conducted several airstrikes on militants in recent weeks. In May, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, decided to rebuild the military presence in Somalia to fight al-Shabaab there, approving a request from the Pentagon that considered the rotation system decided by Donald Trump too risky and ineffective. end of his tenure.
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A former Chabab appointed minister
In recent weeks, al-Shabaab has also carried out attacks on the Somalia-Ethiopia border, raising concerns about stability in that border region.
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud said last month that a military approach would not be enough to end al-Shabaab’s violent insurgency, stressing that his government would only negotiate with the jihadist group when the timing was right.
In early August, Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre announced the appointment of a former radical al-Shabaab Islamist-turned-politician leader as Minister of Religious Affairs in the Somali government. Muktar Robow, aka “Abou Mansour”, publicly resigned from the movement he had co-founded in August 2017.
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