A car loaded with explosives rammed the door of a hotel in central Somalia's port city of Kismayo, followed by gunfire, a police officer and a local resident said on Sunday. The state-run Somali National Television said on Twitter that security forces were dealing with a "terrorist incident" at the hotel.
"There is an explosion at Tawakal Hotel and gunshots are heard," Mohamed Nur, a police captain, told Reuters from Kismayo. There was no immediate information about the victims. Witnesses said a large explosion was heard before the shooting began.
"Security forces have surrounded the scene," Farah Ali, a shopkeeper in Kismayo, told Reuters. It was initially unclear who was responsible for the attack. Mogadishu journalist Jama Nur Ahmed, citing an official, told Al Jazeera that the "exchange of fire" between security forces and militants is still ongoing. Kismayo is the commercial capital of Jubbaland, a region of southern Somalia still partially controlled by the armed group al-Shabab. Al Shabab was expelled from Kismayo in 2012.
The city's port was an important source of income for the group from taxes, coal exports, and levies on weapons and other illegal imports. In 2019, a similar attack on another hotel in Kismayo killed at least 26 people. President-elect Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in May has vowed to defeat al-Shabaab after countless deadly attacks. The armed group was driven out of Mogadishu by African Union forces in 2011. However, it still controls parts of the countryside.
Thousands of Somalis have been killed in a decades-long armed insurgency.
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