Somalia blast hits Kismayu hotel, at least 3 dead – police

MOGADISHU, Oct 23 (Reuters) – An explosives-laden car rammed into the gate of a hotel and detonated on Sunday in an attack that killed at least three people in Somalia’s port city of Kismayu, a police officer said, adding gunfire also erupted.

“So far there are three people dead and eight others injured, who were taken to Kismayu hospital,” Farah Mohamed, a security officer told Reuters from Kismayu.

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.

“When the blast and attack occurred there was a meeting in the hotel, a plan to launch a massive war on al Shabaab,” Mohamed said.

Mohamed Nur, a police captain, and Farah Ali, a shopkeeper in Kismayu, told Reuters the blast at Tawakal Hotel preceded the gunfire.

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.

Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar in Mogadishu and Abdiqani Hassan in Bosaso; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Alex Richardson, William Maclean

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