{"id":40082,"date":"2019-07-12T22:22:41","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T22:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40082"},"modified":"2019-07-12T22:22:41","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T22:22:41","slug":"several-killed-in-bomb-gun-attack-on-somalia-hotel-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40082","title":{"rendered":"Several killed in bomb, gun attack on Somalia hotel: officials"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Several people, including journalists and politicians, were killed in a suicide bomb and gun attack on a hotel in southern Somalia<\/a>, officials said.<\/p>\n

Authorities on Friday said a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle loaded with explosives into the popular Medina hotel in the\u00a0port city of Kismayo, which was followed by a gunfight.<\/p>\n

The area’s legislators and local elders were discussing an upcoming local election in the hotel, according to the officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Security official Abdi Dhuhul told AFP news agency seven people had died, including a former minister and a legislator, though an official death toll has not been released yet.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the Somali Journalists Syndicate\u00a0said there were two reporters among the dead, according to Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n

“Mohamed Omar Sahal, SBC TV correspondent based in Kismayo and Hodan Naleyeh, female TV journalist and founder of Integration TV [are] both among [those] killed,” Abdalle Ahmed Mumin, the syndicate’s secretary general, said.<\/p>\n

Security official Abdiweli Mohamed said several heavily armed gunmen forced their way inside the hotel, shooting as they went.<\/p>\n

“Several gunmen entered and started shooting but the security forces responded quickly and engaged in a gunfight with the attackers inside the building,” he said.<\/p>\n

Armed group\u00a0al-Shabab<\/a>, which is believed to be linked to al-Qaeda and is trying to topple the Somali government, said it carried out the suicide attack.<\/p>\n

“First, we targeted [the hotel] with a suicide car bomb and then armed ‘mujahideen’ (fighters) stormed the hotel. We are still fighting inside the hotel,” said\u00a0Abdiasis Abu Musab, al-Shabab’s military operation spokesman.<\/p>\n

“There are many dead bodies inside the hotel, including a dead white man. We control the hotel now.”<\/p>\n

Hussein Nur, a shopkeeper in Kismayo, told Reuters: “There were many people including officials and elders, mostly from one clan, who were discussing the coming Kismayo election.”<\/p>\n

Nur was referring to elections in the city due sometime in August.<\/p>\n

State-run Somali National News Agency said in a statement Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire had condemned the attack.<\/p>\n

Al-Shabab was ejected from Mogadishu in 2011 and has since been driven from most of its other strongholds. In 2012, it was driven out of Kismayo, whose port had been a major source of revenue for the group.<\/p>\n

Outside of Kismayo, al-Shabab still controls parts of Jubbaland, a region in southern Somalia.<\/p>\n

The armed group remains a major security threat, with its fighters frequently carrying out bombings in Somalia and neighbouring Kenya<\/a>, whose troops form part of the African Union<\/a>-mandated peacekeeping force that helps defend the Somali government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several people, including journalists and politicians, were killed in a suicide bomb and gun attack on a hotel in southern Somalia, officials said. Authorities on Friday said a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle loaded with explosives into the popular Medina hotel in the\u00a0port city of Kismayo, which was followed by a gunfight. The area’s legislators…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":40083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}