TELL Magazine

About 20 persons, including Parliamentarians, have been killed in an attack on a hotel in the centre of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Al-Shabab Islamist militants have claimed responsibility for the attack. They are battling the UN-backed government for the control of Somalia.

The al-Qaeda linked group has been driven out of the country’s major towns but still controls many rural areas of the south.

Police Major Nur Mohammed while speaking at the scene of the explosions said, “first, the car bomb exploded at the gate of the hotel, then a suicide bomber blew himself up in the hotel compound.”