BOSASSO: Militants stormed a hotel in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region on Wednesday, killing four guards, a senior official and an Daesh agency said.
Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack in Bosasso, according to its news agency Amaq. A group declaring allegiance to Daesh has been active in the Puntland region in recent months.
The senior official had earlier blamed militants from Al-Shabab, but a spokesman for the Somali group denied this.
Three fighters stormed the International Village Hotel, Yusuf Mohamed, the governor of Bari region, told Reuters. “Four guards and two of the attackers died in the fighting,” he said.
He said the militants had managed to enter the compound but not the main building of the hotel, which is popular with foreigners.
Militant leader Abdiqadir Mumin broke away from the main Al-Shabab insurgency in 2015 and swore allegiance to Daesh. Experts says the group’s strength is unclear, but he may have fighters numbering in the low hundreds under his command.
However, experts say his group has no known operational links to Daesh in the Middle East.
Al-Shabab regularly launches attacks in Somalia, but tends to focus on the capital Mogadishu and other regions controlled by the federal government.
Until 2011, the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab controlled most of Somalia including Mogadishu. Since then it has been pushed out of the capital and slowly forced out of other strongholds by African Union troops and Somali soldiers.
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