MOGADISHU, Somalia (AA): Casualties have been feared in a bomb explosion and heavy gunfire targeting a busy and popular hotel near the presidential palace in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.<\/p>\n
The Villa Rose Hotel, located near Somalia’s heavily fortified presidential palace, is used by Somali officials.<\/p>\n
Casualties are yet unknown but local media reported that Somalia’s Security Minister Mohamed Ahmed Dodishe is among the people injured in the attack.<\/p>\n
A short statement issued by the Somali police confirmed the attack.<\/p>\n
The police said it rescued several people, including civilians and officials.<\/p>\n
Adam Aw Hirsi, Somalia’s state minister for the environment, said that he was safe after a “terrorist explosion targeted at my residence.”<\/p>\n
The al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the attack.<\/p>\n
Somalia’s parliament said it had postponed a scheduled session for both of its houses.<\/p>\n
“All members of parliament of both councils are being informed that today’s scheduled meeting has been postponed,” it said in a statement on its Facebook page.<\/p>\n
The attack came a day after the Somali government said that more than 100 al-Shabaab terrorists, including 12 of their commanders, were killed in the Middle Shabelle region in a military operation supported by local militias and international security partners.<\/p>\n
Somalia has been plagued by insecurity for years, with al-Shabaab being one of the main threats.<\/p>\n
Since at least 2007, al-Shabaab has waged a deadly campaign against the Somali government and international forces, claiming thousands of lives.<\/p>\n
The UN has also warned of growing instability in the country, with its periodic reports on Somalia this year detailing attacks by al-Shabaab and pro-Daesh\/ISIS groups.<\/p>\n
There were at least 1,518 civilian casualties – 651 killed and 867 injured – in terrorist attacks in Somalia in 2018, followed by 1,459 – 591 killed and 868 injured – in 2019, according to UN estimates.<\/p>\n
Additional report by The Muslim News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Casualties have been feared in a bomb explosion and heavy gunfire targeting a busy and popular hotel near the presidential palace in Somalia\u2019s capital Mogadishu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":58730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}