Mogadishu (EFE)
“Security forces have successfully neutralized the Al Shabab militants responsible for the terrorist attack on the Pearl Beach Hotel, on Lido beach, Mogadishu,” the Somali National News Agency (SONNA) reported.
Numerous civilians rescued in the operation
“A large number of civilians were rescued during the operation,” SONNA added, without providing figures for possible deaths or injuries over a siege that lasted about 10 hours.
Several explosions followed by shots rocked the hotel on Friday, frequented by government officials, politicians and parliamentarians and located in a heavily protected area of the Somali capital and close to the embassies of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
It appears that the explosions may have been the work of suicide bombers in an attack that Al Shabab claimed in a statement.
The attack caused extensive material damage to the hotel, where citizens interested in the fate of relatives and friends who were in the establishment gathered this morning.
Several ambulances stood guard overnight near the building waiting to treat potential victims.
“I left Pearl Beach before the attack. I think it was about twenty minutes before. I went with my younger cousin to the beach for an evening walk. That’s when we heard an explosion,” eyewitness Muhubo Hassan told EFE last night.
“If we had stayed a little longer in the hotel, we might not have been so lucky. We could see smoke billowing in the sky after the explosion and a lot of people screaming. I ran with my cousin down the beach for safety,” Hassan added.
An eyewitness, Hibaq Mohamed, told EFE that “when the explosion occurred, we saw a group of men running into the hotel with firearms.”
“I can’t say how much because we were so confused by the explosion. She left us in a daze,” Mohamed added.
EFE tried to contact the Police to confirm if there have been victims in the attack, although it did not receive a response.
It is not the first time that the hotel has suffered an attack
It is not the first time that a hotel has suffered a terrorist attack in Mogadishu since Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud took power in May 2022.
On the night of August 19, 2022, Al Shabab stormed the Hayat hotel in the capital in an attack that lasted about thirty hours and caused at least 21 deaths and more than a hundred injuries.
That month, Mohamud declared “total war” against the terrorist group, which the Somali army is fighting alongside the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) in military operations sometimes supported by the United States.
Al Shabab, affiliated to the Al Qaeda network since 2012, often perpetrates attacks in the capital and other parts of the country to overthrow the central government -backed by the international community- and establish an Islamic state of Wahhabi (ultra-conservative) cut.
The jihadist group controls rural areas in central and southern Somalia and also attacks neighboring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.
Somalia has lived in a state of war and chaos since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown, leaving the country without an effective government and in the hands of Islamist militias and warlords.