Heavy gunfire rang out across central Mogadishu on Friday as Somali special forces battled to dislodge insurgents holed up next to a hotel they bombed the previous evening, and as the death toll stemming from that attack neared 30.
Islamist al Shabaab fighters set off a bomb outside the Hotel Maka Al-Mukarama on Thursday night before retreating to an adjacent building, from where they fired on soldiers who tried to enter. Another bomb exploded later about 1 kilometre away.
Rescuers said the number of dead from the first explosion, which destroyed several buildings, could well rise.
The attack comes days after US forces in Somalia stepped up air strikes against the group, which is fighting to dislodge a Western-backed government protected by peacekeepers.
“The militants are still fighting from inside a civilian house adjacent to the hotel,” police officer Major Musa Ali told Reuters on Friday morning. “… (They) are fighting back with grenades and Kalashnikov (rifles).”
He said 29 people, mostly civilians, had died in the attack and its aftermath, and 80 had been wounded.