Officials said a suicide auto bomber crashed into a gate outside a popular hotel in the Somali capital, with at least 15 people killed in the blast and the ensuing gunfight.
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“Dulyadeyn was killed with other 16 members from Al-Shabaab (on Tuesday night)”, said Daud Aweis, the Somali government spokesman. The (security) operation is about to end now.
Authorities could not immediately verify al Shabaab’s statement, but police said 10 people had been killed and the toll was likely to rise further.
Witnesses said sporadic gunfire could still be heard at the five-storey building which has been extensively damaged.
The group, whose name means “The Youth”, seeks to impose its strict version of sharia law in Somalia, where it frequently attacks security and government targets, as well as hotels and restaurants in the capital. US officials said they couldn’t confirm yet if he was killed.
On May 27, US forces carried out an airstrike in south-central Somalia targeting Abdullahi Haji Daud, a senior military commander for al-Shabab, according to a statement issued today by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook.
Al shabaab bomber detonated vehicle bomb at the back-ward gate of the hotel, before armed militants fired their way onto the ground, according to eyewitness and Radio Shabelle reporter.
The group, which is seeking an Islamist state in Somalia and is affiliated with the worldwide al-Qaeda terrorist network, has attacked government facilities and hotels in Mogadishu on a regular basis.
Somalia’s forces killed Mohamed Dulyadeyn, an al-Shabaab leader who neighboring Kenya believes was the mastermind behind an April 2015 university attack in that country.
Among the dead, he said, was Mohamud Ali Dulyadeyn, suspected to have been the mastermind the April 2015 attack on Garissa University, the worst such assault in Kenya in nearly 20 years.
Harun Maruf, a journalist for the Voice of America, reports on Twitter that the militants appeared to be from Al-Shabab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate that wants to turn Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state.
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A similar US airstrike earlier this year targeted al Shabaab senior leader Hassan Ali Dhoore, the Pentagon announced in April.
