The toll of the attack on a hotel in Mogadishu by radical Al-Shabaab Islamists, which lasted 30 hours and ended around midnight on Saturday, has risen to 21 civilians killed, the Somali Minister of Health announced on Sunday.
“The Ministry of Health has confirmed at this stage (the toll of) 21 dead and 117 injured” in the attack on the Hayat hotel in the Somali capital which began on Friday evening, said Minister Ali Haji Adan. On Sunday, relatives of those missing in the attack were awaiting news from relatives following an attack involving a bomb blast and gunshots carried out by Al-Shabaab Islamists, an Al-affiliated group. Qaeda.
An attack claimed by the Shebab
Security forces put an end to the attack on the night of Saturday to Sunday, announcing the death of all the assailants. Rescuers were trying to find possible survivors among the rubble on Sunday morning, AFP journalists noted, while the hotel’s gated areas were quiet and experts were working to detect possible explosives. .
The hotel suffered heavy damage during the face-off between Al-Shabaab and security forces, with parts of the building collapsing. This attack, claimed by the shebab, is the most serious in Mogadishu since the entry into office of the new president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in June, after months of political instability. It highlights the challenge posed to him by the Islamist insurrection, which has lasted for 15 years against the federal government.
Children in shock
Police Commissioner Abdi Hassan Mohamed Hijar told reporters on Sunday that “106 people, including women and children”, were rescued by security forces during the siege that ended around midnight. “The victims were affected mainly in the first hours of the attack,” he added.
Shebab spokesman Abdiaziz Abu-Musab told their station, Radio Andalus, on Saturday that the group had “inflicted heavy losses” on security forces. According to a woman witness, Hayat Ali, three children from the same family, aged four to seven, were found by the security forces, in a state of shock, hiding in the hotel toilets. On Sunday morning, dozens of people looking for news of their relatives were gathered in the street leading to the hotel, but were blocked from a distance by the security forces.
Attacks escalate in recent months
“The complex attack is meant to show that they (the Al-Shabaab Islamists) are still very present,” said Samira Gaid, director of the Hiraal Institute think tank in Mogadishu, Somalia’s allies, including the United States, the UK and Turkey, as well as the UN, strongly condemned the attack. Al-Shabaab were driven out of Somalia’s main cities, including Mogadishu in 2011, but remain entrenched in large rural areas. In recent months, they have intensified their attacks. On Wednesday, the American army announced that it had killed in an airstrike 13 Shebab militiamen who were attacking soldiers of the Somali regular forces in a remote area of this country in the Horn of Africa.
In May, US President Joe Biden decided to re-establish a military presence in Somalia to fight the Shebab there, approving a request from the Pentagon which deemed the rotation system decided by his predecessor Donald Trump at the end of his term too risky and ineffective. mandate. Somalia’s new president Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud said last month that a military approach is insufficient to end the Al-Shabaab insurgency.