Al-Shabaab jihadists stormed the popular Hayat hotel on Friday night, in an exchange of gunfire and explosions.
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Somali security forces put an end, on Saturday evening August 20, to the siege of a hotel in Mogadishu, by Shebab jihadists, which lasted around thirty hours and caused more than a dozen civilian victims, declared a senior security official.
‘Security forces have now ended the siege and the gunmen are dead, we have not had any fire from the building in the past hour’, announced around midnight this official on condition of anonymity. Jihadists stormed the popular Hayat hotel on Friday night, in an exchange of gunfire and explosions. The toll of the attack has risen to 21 civilians killed, the Somali Minister of Health announced on Sunday and “117 wounded”.
It is the largest attack in Mogadishu since Somalia’s new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, took office in June, after months of political instability. The Shebab, who have been engaged in an insurrection against the Somali federal government for 15 years, have claimed responsibility for this operation.