MOGADISHU: Al-Shabaab fighters shot dead 30 people, including six members of parliament, in a suicide attack on a Mogadishu hotel Tuesday, Somalia’s deputy prime minister said.
The two Islamist militants disguised as government security forces then blew themselves up to avoid arrest after the attack on the hotel, which was crowded with Somali officials.
“Thirty people died in this ambush. Six of them are members of the Somali parliament and four are Somali government civil servants,” Abdirahman Haji Adab Ibbi told reporters after the deadly rampage at Hotel Mona.
“The 20 others are innocent civilians who died in this horrible incident,” he added.
Somali hardline Islamists linked to al-Qaeda have waged a three-year insurgency against the fragile Western-backed government in the chaotic Horn of African country.
More than 6,300 African Union peacekeepers are deployed in Mogadishu but can do little more than guard the airport and port and shield President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.
The attack comes amid two days of fighting that have killed at least 40 civilians and wounded more than 130 in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, said Ali Muse, the head of Mogadishu’s ambulance service.
The fighting began Monday, soon after the spokesman for Somalia’s most dangerous militant group declared a “massive war” on what he labeled “invaders,” an apparent reference to the 6,000 troops from the African Union that protect and prop up the weak Somali government.
The group, al-Shabaab, claimed responsibility last month for twin bombings in Uganda’s capital that killed 76 people. Al-Shabaab said the attacks were in retaliation for Uganda’s deployment of troops with the African Union.
Al-Shabaab has increased the use of suicide attacks in recent years, though they are still somewhat rare in Somalia. Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are believed to be helping train al-Shabaab fighters.
Somalia hasn’t had a central government since 1991.
Source: AlArabiya.net