MOGADISHU — An explosives-laden car rammed into the gate of a hotel and detonated on Sunday in the centre of Somalia’s port city of Kismayu, and gunfire was heard immediately afterwards, a police officer and a resident said.
The state-run Somali National Television said on Twitter security forces were dealing with a “terrorist incident” at the hotel, which al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab has taken responsibility for.
“There is a blast at Tawakal hotel and there is gunfire being heard,” Mohamed Nur, a police captain, told Reuters from Kismayu.
There was no immediate word on casualties.
Witnesses said a huge blast was heard before the gunfire started.
“The security forces have besieged the scene,” Farah Ali, a shopkeeper in Kismayu, told Reuters.
Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military operation spokesperson, said the group was behind the attack, and intended to strike Jubbaland region’s administrators who work from the hotel.
Kismayu is the commercial capital of Jubbaland, a region of southern Somalia still partly controlled by al Shabaab.
Al Shabaab was driven out of Kismayu in 2012. The city’s port had been a major source of revenue for the group from taxes, charcoal exports and levies on arms and other illegal imports.
In 2019, a similar attack at another hotel in Kismayu killed at least 26 people.
The group is battling to topple the central government and impose its rule based on its own strict interpretation of Islam’s sharia law. It has killed thousands of Somalis and hundreds of civilians across East Africa in a decade-long insurgency.
Somali security forces say they have made gains on the battlefield against al Shabaab in recent weeks while fighting alongside local self-defence groups, but the group has continued to carry out deadly raids.
