Gunmen have stormed a hotel in the centre of the Somali capital Mogadishu, with reports of at least 10 dead.<\/p>\n
They entered the Ambassador Hotel on Maka al-Mukarama street after setting off a car bomb at the gates outside, witnesses said.<\/p>\n
Politicians and government officials were believed to be staying in the hotel.<\/p>\n
The al-Shabab militant group was quick to say it was behind the attack, which intelligence officials say is now over.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s Somali Service reporter Ibrahim Aden in Mogadishu says the explosion is one of the largest to hit the city and the scale of destruction is enormous.<\/p>\n
The head of the city’s Amiin ambulance service has told the BBC the main Medina hospital is overcrowded.<\/p>\n
Al-Shabab, which is battling the UN-backed government, was driven from Mogadishu in 2011 but still remains a potent threat and frequently carries out attacks in the city.<\/p>\n
The government, with the help of African Union forces, is fighting the al-Qaeda-linked group to regain control of the country.
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gunmen have stormed a hotel in the centre of the Somali capital Mogadishu, with reports of at least 10 dead. They entered the Ambassador Hotel on Maka al-Mukarama street after setting off a car bomb at the gates outside, witnesses said. Politicians and government officials were believed to be staying in the hotel. The al-Shabab […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":218880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/218880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}