Somali troops on Saturday took full control of a hotel that extremist gunmen stormed and occupied for more than 12 hours following a suicide bombing. At least 17 people died and dozens were wounded. The gunfire has stopped and security agents have accessed the whole building, said senior police officer Capt. Mohamed Hussein. He had earlier said the gunmen were believed to have occupied the third and fourth floors of the the Maka Al-Mukarramah hotel in the capital Mogadishu. “The operation has ended we have taken full control of the hotel,” Hussein said.
Hussein said security forces found four more bodies in the hotel today, plus nine dead yesterday. Four people died in the hospital, according to Duniya Mohamed, a doctor at Madina hospital in Mogadishu. Hussein Ali, an official of Mogadishu’s ambulance service, said there were 28 wounded. There was no immediate indication of how many of the dead were attackers, all of whom were killed according to Hussein. Somalia’s ambassador to Switzerland was among those killed in the attack, said Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group that has carried out many attacks in Somalia, claimed responsibility for the assault on the hotel, which is popular with Somali government officials and foreigners. Al-Shabab controlled much of Mogadishu between 2007 and 2011, but was pushed out of Somalia’s capital and other major cities by African Union forces. The attack started around 4 pm yesterday when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car at the gate of the hotel. Gunmen then quickly moved in.