MOGADISHU (AFP) – The number of people killed in an hours-long attack by militants on a hotel in the Somali capital Mogadishu has risen to 13, a security commander said on Saturday.
“We are getting information about five more victims confirmed dead and that makes 13 the overall number of civilians killed by the terrorists,” Mohamed Abdikadir told AFP.
Police officer Ibrahim Duale also confirmed that more than 10 people had been killed but said police would release updated information once the siege at the Hayat Hotel was over.
He said most of the civilians who were in the hotel at the time of the gun and bomb assault launched by Al-Shabaab militants on Friday evening had been rescued.
“The security forces will announce any moment that the siege is over, it took a long time because of the complexity of the rescue mission,” Duale told AFP.
The director of Mogadishu’s main trauma hospital, Dr Mohamed Abdirahman Jama, said the facility was treating at least 40 people wounded in the hotel attack and a separate mortar strike on another area of the capital.
Nine people were also injured and taken to medical centers, according to the head of Mogadishu’s Aamin ambulance services, Abdikadir Abdirahman.
Large sections of the hotel, which is a popular location for government officials, lawmakers and political figures, were destroyed by the militant group, according to Somali officials.
An African Union force pushed Al-Shabaab militants out of the capital in 2011. The group, however, still controls swathes of countryside, and takes random spots across the country under sporadic attacks from time to time.
Back in May, at least three civilians were killed and a number of others wounded after the group raided a military camp belonging to an African Union mission in central Somalia.
In August 2020, the group said it was behind an attack on another hotel in Mogadishu, in which at least 16 people were killed.