[Pak Daily Times] Somali Islamic exemplars disguised as government soldiers went on a shooting rampage in a Mogadishu hotel on Tuesday, killing 32 people including six MPs before blowing themselves up.Follows up yesterday's story...
The brazen attack by two rebels from the al Qaeda-inspired Shebab movement a stone's throw from the presidential palace marked a new escalation on the second day of clashes in the capital that had already left 29 civilians dead.
"Thirty-two people died in this ambush. Six of them are members of the Somali parliament and four are Somali government civil servants," Deputy Prime Minister Abdirahman Haji Adan Ibbi told reporters.
"The 20 others are innocent bystanders who died in this horrible incident." An AFP reporter who managed to enter the Hotel Mona compound said the doors of every single room and even the toilets had been smashed open by the two attackers.
Officials visiting the scene of the carnage held their noses because of the stench of burned flesh and smoke.
Witnesses and hotel staff said the attackers were wearing government security uniforms and rubbed out security guards at the gate to the compound as they rushed into the three-storey building.
"They rained gunfire on everybody. Nobody stood a chance. I was lucky because they aimed at me but I jumped out of the window and survived," hotel employee Adan Mohamed told AFP.
"People were screaming, there was total panic. When they decided they had finished killing everybody, they climbed to the balcony and started opening fire on government forces outside the hotel," he added.
One government soldier who took part in the fighting and refused to give his name said one of the bombers detonated his boom jacket on the balcony when he saw they were surrounded. "These two guys were on the balcony, close together, shouting
"One of them was blown to pieces, only the head remains. The other one's body is completely burned, he is all black," the soldier added.
Shabaab front man Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage took credit for the attack during a phone press conference.
"Our commando units carried out this attack," he said. The bloodbath at Hotel Mona, which lies in the small area firmly under government control, came on the second day of a deadly battle in the naked city.
The embattled transitional government and the UN condemned the attack.