DEVELOPING: A team of gunmen took hotel guests hostage after storming the building in a Somalia’s capital city, Mogadishu on Saturday, police have revealed.
A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the gate of the Nasa-Hablod hotel near the capital’s busy KM-4 junction, followed by a second explosion heard inside the hotel as gunmen fought their way in, police said. At least four bodies were seen outside the hotel, one officer said.
The number of hostages was unclear. The attackers hurled grenades and fired machine guns to resist security forces trying to reach them on the second floor, police captain Mohamed Hussein said.
Security forces killed at least two of the attackers who have deployed snipers on the hotel rooftop, Hussein added.
Update:
Via Fox News:
At least 14 people were killed when gunmen stormed a hotel in Somalia’s capital and took an unknown number of hotel guests hostage, police and medical workers said Saturday, before security forces hunted down the attackers and ended an hours-long assault that began with an explosives-laden vehicle blowing up at the hotel gate.
Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the latest in a series of hotel attacks in Mogadishu.
“We have finally ended the siege. The last remaining militants were killed on the top floor,” police Capt. Mohamed Hussein said after security forces pursued the gunmen who had retreated to upper floors of the Nasa-Hablod hotel, setting up sniper posts on the roof and throwing grenades. Police said at least four gunmen were involved in the attack.
“We have so far confirmed the deaths of 14 people. Some of them died in the hospitals,” Hussein said. The deaths included women who were selling khat, a stimulant leaf popular with Somali men, outside the hotel, he said.