At least eight civilians have been killed in clashes between the Shebab Islamist group, which they attacked the hotel in the Somali capital Mogadishu last Friday evening, and security forces are trying to neutralize them, a Somali security official said.

“The security forces are still neutralizing the terrorists who have locked themselves in the hotel room. Most of the people were rescued, but at this stage, the death of at least eight civilians has been confirmed,” said Mohamed Abdikadir.

Shebaab attacked the Hayat Hotel in Mogadishu last Friday evening after setting off explosives and exchanging gunfire with security forces.

“Security forces rescued dozens of civilians, including children, who were trapped in the building,” Abdikadir added.

The attackers were still hiding in the hotel in the early morning, and sporadic gunshots and loud explosions were heard in the area.

Abdifatah Adan Hassan, a spokesman for the Somali police, told reporters that the first explosion was carried out by a suicide bomber before the Islamists stormed the hotel.

Eyewitnesses said the second explosion occurred minutes after the first, injuring or killing rescuers, police officers and civilians who rushed to the hotel to help the victims.

Al-Qaeda-linked Shebaab, which has been leading an insurgency against the Somali federal government for 15 years, claimed responsibility for the attack.

“The Shebab militant group broke into the Hyatt Hotel in Mogadishu,” the organization confirmed in a brief statement on an Islamist-linked website.

This is the biggest attack in Mogadishu since the election of new Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in May.

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The Shebabs were expelled from Mogadishu and other major cities in Somalia in 2011 but retained significant influence in the countryside. In recent months, they have stepped up their attacks.

On Wednesday, the US military announced that it had killed 13 Shebab members in an airstrike that attacked Somali regulars in an isolated area of ​​the country near Tintaan, about 300 kilometers north of Mogadishu.

The United States has launched several such airstrikes in recent weeks. At the same time, Shebab launched attacks on the Somali-Ethiopian border, raising concerns about the stability of the border.

In May, US President Joe Biden decided to re-establish his country’s military presence in Somalia to deal with Shebab, approving the Pentagon’s request.

Somalia’s new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, said last month that a military approach was not enough to end Shebaab, but noted that his government would only negotiate with the Islamists when it saw fit.

In early August, Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre announced that he had appointed former Shebab official Mukhtar Robow or Abu Mansour, who defected from the organization he co-founded in 2017, as Minister of Religious Affairs.

^{Sources: APE-MPE, AFP.}