Somalia Hotel Attack Death Toll Rises to 26, With 56 Injured

(Bloomberg) -- At least 26 people were killed in an attack on a Somalian hotel by suspected al-Shabaab fighters, according to a senior state official.

The dead included two Americans, a Canadian and a Briton, as well as three each from Kenya and Tanzania, Ahmed Mohamed Islam, the president of the country’s Jubbaland state, said Saturday. At least 56 other people were injured, including two Chinese, in the attack on the Cas-casey hotel in the port town of Kismayo, he said at a news conference.

“Four attackers stormed the hotel,” Islam said. “One blew himself up in the first place. One was caught alive in the security operations, while the other two were killed.”

Read more about the attack, which targeted a hotel popular with officials

The attack came after three al-Shabaab members were executed on Wednesday. They had been sentenced to death by Somalia’s military court over the lethal October 2017 bombing of a hotel in the capital Mogadishu.

Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, stages frequent attacks in Somalia, especially in Mogadishu where it was driven out in 2011 by Somali troops and African Union forces. In their deadliest strike, the insurgents killed more than 500 people on October 14, 2018, using a truck bomb in the capital.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mohammed Omar Ahmed in Garowe at mahmed76@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Amott at jamott@bloomberg.net, Bruce Stanley

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