MOGADISHU: Suspected Shebab militants stormed two hotels in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Friday, killing at least three people, security officials said, adding that three insurgents also died in heavy fighting.

“The terrorists were killed... we have confirmed three civilians dead at Weheliye hotel and the three attackers were killed too,” said government security official Mohamed Guhad.

“There was a loud blast and explosions,” said police officer Abdi Dhuhul, dding that the gunmen “stormed the building”. But Guhad, who said the gunmen were believed to be Shebab militants, said fighting continued in the nearby Siyaad hotel near the presidential palace and the well-guarded government district, where gunmen launched a simultaneous attack. Both hotels are fortified and popular with government workers, including lawmakers from the parliament nearby.

Shebab insurgents have carried out repeated attacks in the area, and messages posted on websites close to the Al Qaeda-linked group said the Islamists had carried out the hotel raids.

Previous attacks have seen the Shebab blast their way into buildings using suicide bombers — sometimes inside cars packed with explosives — before commandos enter inside with rifles and grenades.

The Islamic militants have stepped up their attacks during Islam’s holy fasting month of Ramazan, and Friday raids came as people settled down to break their daylight fast.

The Shebab is fighting to overthrow Somalia’s Western-backed government which is propped up and protected by the 22,000-strong African Union force.

Shebab attacks seek to counter claims that they are close to defeat after losing territory in the face of an AU and Somali government offensive and regular US drone strikes against their leaders as well as due to defections.

The militants have also carried out a string of revenge strikes in neighbouring countries — including the September 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, which left at least 67 people dead, and the April massacre of close to 150 students in Garissa in Kenya’s northeast.

On Tuesday, Shebab gunmen killed 14 workers in Kenya’s northern town of Mandera, close to the Somali border.

The upsurge in cross-border attacks and the emergence of Kenya-based Shebab cells is now Kenya’s number-one security headache, as well as being a strategic blow given that Nairobi sent troops into southern Somalia in 2011 in the hope they would protect the long, porous border.

In recent weeks, Shebab fighters have attacked AU bases in Somalia, including a base in Lego village, 100 kilometres northwest of the capital Mogadishu, manned by around 100 Burundian soldiers.

The Shebab later boasted of having killed 80 soldiers and carried off the bodies of 60 of them, before setting the base on fire.

Video images taken by the Shebab show several bodies scattered around the ransacked base, with one shot showing around a dozen bodies lined up. Somalia has been wracked by instability since the collapse of Siad Barre’s hardline regime in 1991.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2015

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