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Mogadishu: Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shabab militants launched a car bomb attack followed by an armed raid on a Mogadishu hotel Friday, causing several casualties, a police official said.
“There was an explosion outside and gunmen stormed the hotel. There is shooting inside. We don’t know how many dead there are,” police official Ahmed Abdi Fatah told AFP.
He added that some government officials were also believed to have been wounded in the attack, and that security forces had surrounded the hotel.
The car bombing followed by armed raid — a trademark of the militant Islamists — targeted the Maka al Mukarama hotel in the city center.
The Shabab’s spokesman, Abdulaziz Abu Musab, told AFP that the militants were “in control of the area.”
“Our fighters are inside the hotel,” he said. “Some people have been killed and others have been wounded but we don’t have exact casuality figures.”
A police official had earlier said that at least one person had died in the initial car bombing that set off the attack.
The Islamists stage regular attacks in the capital as part of their fight against the country’s internationally-backed government and African Union forces supporting it.