Al-Qaeda-affiliated group Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.
Advertisement
“We lost 2 soldiers and 4 others were injured, al Shabaab planted two bombs as our convoy headed to Galgala Hills”, Abdi said.
Al Shabaab was not immediately reachable for comment.
Police officer Major Farah Ali said the Ambassador Hotel was now secure after the entire building was cleared of militants.
“All the gunmen were killed by the security forces”, said security minister Abdirizak Omar Mohamed. “So far the death toll we have is 15 dead and 20 others wounded”.
“The attack was started with a heavy explosion and members from the Mujahedeen fighters stormed the building”, the Shabaab said in a statement.
Hassan had said earlier that police suspected al-Shabaab fighters were still present in the hotel. Afterward, gunmen went floor to floor in the hotel, opening fire on hotel guests.
Also on Wednesday the government announced it had killed Mohamed Kuno, the al-Shabab militant who led the attack on Garissa University in Kenya in April 2015 that killed 148 people.
It has frequently carried out attacks in neighbouring Kenya and vowed retribution against “Western crusaders” who it says are guilty of offences against Muslims in Somalia.
In February, at least nine people were killed when al Shabaab fighters set off a auto bomb at the gate of a park near a hotel in the capital. It was the worst attack by Islamist terrorists in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi that killed more than 200 people. Before that, the United States had only targeted al-Qaida figures in Somalia in the years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. An African Union mission helped the nation’s forces push the militants from Mogadishu in 2011 and since then took over territory in the group’s strongholds in the south and central regions. It links another major artery, K4, to the presidential palace. A senior Somali official said US helicopters fired missiles into a auto in which Dulyadeyn and two others were traveling. They said they did not have details of that operation and they have not yet confirmed if Dulyadayn was killed.
African Union forces and the Somali state have been fighting al-Shabaab to regain control of the war-torn country.
Advertisement
In another development, a senior Shabaab commander suspected of organizing the 2015 attack on Kenya’s Garissa University has been killed in a Special Forces raid in southern Somalia, a local official said.
