An attack on a Mogadishu hotel leaves at least 15 dead and 35 injured

At least 15 people have been killed and 35 injured today in the Somali capital Mogadishu following a car bomb blast and the seizure of a hotel by al-Shabab jihadists, medical sources said. "There are now 15 dead and at least 35 injured after an armed attack on the Elite Hotel, located on Lido beach," Abshir Mohamed Amina, a nurse with the Somali ambulance service Aamin, told Efe. Adam Ahmed, a witness to the attack, told Efe that first a car bomb exploded near the hotel, followed by "at least three armed men" who infiltrated the building.

The military operations ended about three hours after the start of the attack, which triggered a confrontation between the terrorists and the security forces over control of this hotel facility. The jihadist group Al Shabab has already confirmed through its media the responsibility for this event, whose number of fatalities could increase in the next few hours.

The spokesman for the Federal Government of Somalia, Ismael Mukhtar Omar, told Efe that among the dead was a senior official from the Somali Ministry of Information. The recently built Elite Hotel is located on the beach and is regularly frequented by young people as well as members of the Somali upper class.

Mogadishu suffers frequent attacks from Al Shabab, an organization affiliated to al-Qaeda since 2012 and which controls the rural areas of central and southern Somalia, where it seeks to establish an Islamic state of Wahhabi (ultraconservative) status.