Suspected Al-Shabaab gunmen set off an explosion and stormed a popular hotel in Somalia’s capital Wednesday, killing at least 13 people and three attackers, a security official said.
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Also on Wednesday, Somali special forces backed by United States troops claimed to have killed Mohamed Mohamud Ali-also known as Dulyadin and Kuno-the suspected organiser of an attack on a university in Garissa, Kenya, in April 2015 that killed 148 people, mostly students. They lived in it.
Shortly after 10 p.m. local time, Hassan said that the security operation was about to end, as police appeared to be taking back control of the hotel.
Gunfire dies down inside building, a day after deaths of at least 16 people, including two MPs, in coordinated attack.
In the coastal Somali town of Kismayo meanwhile, a local security official said the suspected architect of the bloodbath in Garissa had been killed in a raid in southwestern Somalia in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.
The Garissa attack was the deadliest in Kenya since the Al-Qaeda bombing of the USA embassy in 1998.
Another witness, Ibrahim Sheikh Nur, said he saw “several dead bodies outside the hotel”.
One militant was killed at the entrance to the hotel while two others entered and shot at residents, the AU force said in a statement.
The al-Shabab militant group was quick to say it was behind the attack.
Da’ud was killed in Kunya Barrow in Lower Shabelle region, the government’s news agency reported, citing an unnamed National Intelligence Agency official.
Mohamed Hussein said two lawmakers were among the dead.
The attack began when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the hotel’s gates.
Both contribute troops to an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia. They said they did not have details of that operation and they have not yet confirmed if Dulyadayn was killed. A auto bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the capital in April, killing at least five.
Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow, reporting from Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya, said the Ambassador Hotel is located along the road that Erdogan “was supposed to take from the airport to the presidential palace”.
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At least 15 people have died in the attack which has been claimed by terror group Al-Shabaab. They aim to overthrow the Western-backed Somali government and impose its own version of fundamentalist Islam in the country and many rural areas are still controlled by the terrorists.
