Via NY Post:

Islamic militants deployed dual car bombs to tear through a hotel in the Somali capital of Mogadishu before storming the compound and killing at least 15 people inside.

The Al-Shabab terrorists targeted the popular Sahafi hotel Sunday, where a member of parliament and a general who fought against the militant group were killed, BBC reported.

The attack started at daybreak when a bomber detonated a car bomb at the entrance gate and then four men stormed inside the hotel armed with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and suicide-bomb vests.

The owner of the hotel and Gen Abdikarim Dhagabadan, who commanded the operation against al-Shabab in 2011, were among the victims, BBC said.

African Union troops and government forces engaged in a gun battle with the group before regaining control of the hotel.

“This is the action of an increasingly desperate, internally-divided group of extremists,” Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in a statement Sunday. “Our security forces have full control of the situation.”