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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Somalia ends deadly hotel siege, toll up to 14

MOGDISHU: Somali forces battled overnight to end a deadly gun and bomb siege on a Mogadishu hotel by Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militants which killed at least 14 people, police said Saturday.

The war-torn country´s ambassador to Switzerland Yusuf Bari-Bari was among the dead in Friday´s dramatic assault on the Maka al Mukarama hotel, used by politicians, diplomats and businessmen, officials said.

The earlier

By AFP
March 28, 2015
MOGDISHU: Somali forces battled overnight to end a deadly gun and bomb siege on a Mogadishu hotel by Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militants which killed at least 14 people, police said Saturday.

The war-torn country´s ambassador to Switzerland Yusuf Bari-Bari was among the dead in Friday´s dramatic assault on the Maka al Mukarama hotel, used by politicians, diplomats and businessmen, officials said.

The earlier death toll given was 10.

The attack came as members of Somalia´s Western-backed government were meeting at the hotel, located on an arterial road linking the presidential palace to the airport, a Shebab spokesman said.

Police said the last of five rebels who had barricaded themselves into the first-floor of the hotel, where security is extremely tight, were killed early on Saturday.

"Fourteen people were killed and 13 others wounded in the attack," Somali Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Heyr Mareye told reporters at the scene on Saturday.

"The terrorists attacked the hotel with a car filled with explosives and five to six rebels got into where the leaders and diplomats were," he added.

The Shebab, who stage regular attacks in the capital as part of their fight against the country´s internationally-backed government and African Union forces supporting it, had targeted the hotel earlier this month and quickly claimed responsibility.

"The mujahedeen fighters are conducting an operation targeting the heads of the apostates in Mogadishu," Shebab spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab told AFP on Friday, adding that the militants had been able to quickly seize the hotel.