Somali troops have taken 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 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 on Saturday, plus nine dead on Friday. Four people died in hospital, according to Duniya Mohamed, a doctor at Madina hospital in Mogadishu. Hussein Ali, an official of Mogadishu’s ambulance service, said 28 people were 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 the Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Al-Shabaab, an Islamic extremist group linked to al-Qaida 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-Shabaab controlled much of Mogadishu between 2007 and 2011, but was pushed out of the capital and other major cities by African Union (AU) forces.
The attack started around 4pm on Friday when a suicide bomber detonated his car packed with explosives at the gate of the hotel. Gunmen then quickly moved in.
Hours later, the militants were still holed up in the hotel’s dark alleys and rooms. Sporadic gunfire could be heard, but it appeared that the security forces waited until daybreak before trying again to dislodge the militants.
Al-Shabaab routinely carries out suicide bombings, drive-by shootings and other attacks in Mogadishu, the seat of Somalia’s western-backed government – often targeting government troops, politicians and foreigners.
Despite major setbacks in 2014, the group continues to wage a deadly insurgency against Somalia’s government and remains a threat in the east African region.
The group has carried out attacks in neighbouring countries, including Kenya, whose military is part of the AU force bolstering Somalia’s efforts to combat the al-Shabaab insurgency.
In September 2013, the group killed at least 67 people in an assault on the Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.