Death toll from massive Somali hotel bombing rises to 15

The attack hit the Jazeera Palace hotel in Mogdishu, home to the diplomatic missions of China, Qatar and the UAE.

An African Union soldier walks past the scene of destruction following a suicide car bomb attack on the Jazeera Palace hotel in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP Photo

MOGADISHU // The death toll from a massive lorry bomb outside a hotel in Somalia’s capital rose to 15 on Monday, as the US president said that more needed to be done against the Al Qaeda-affiliated extremists who claimed the attack.

The Jazeera Palace hotel is home to the diplomatic missions of China, Qatar and the UAE, and is popular among Somali government officials and foreign visitors.

Speaking in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa a day after the attack, Barack Obama praised recent advances by Somali and African Union troops against Al Shabab militants, but said it was important to keep up the pressure.

“Part of the reasons we’ve seen this shrinkage of Shabab in East Africa is that we’ve had our regional teams ... with local forces,” he said. “We don’t need to send our own Marines in to do the fighting – the Ethiopians are tough fighters and the Kenyans and Ugandans have been serious about what they’re doing.”

“We’ve got more work to do we have to now keep the pressure on,” he said, adding that the group offers nothing but “death and destruction”.

The toll from Sunday’s suicide bombing included a Kenyan diplomat, a Chinese embassy guard and three journalists, including one working for London-based Universal television. Beijing said that three more of its embassy staff were slightly wounded.

“Some of the wounded died last night, while other bodies were recovered under the wreckage of nearby buildings,” said Somali government security officer Ahmed Ali.

Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud gave a defiant warning to the insurgents on Monday.

“I have a message for the terrorists: the Jazeera Palace will be rebuilt and it will soon be back in business,” he said. “That is how we respond to callous attacks such as this – attacks that, as is so often the case, harm only innocent Somali citizens and our international colleagues who are here to help.”

Al Shabab said that the attack was “retaliation for the killing of dozens of innocent civilians” who it claimed had died during attacks last week by Ethiopian forces against the group’s bases in southern Somalia.

The attack on Somalia’s premier hotel raised fears that Al Shabab is escalating its violence.

“This is a very worrying situation,” senior police official Captain Mohammed Hussein said on Monday as he stood outside the hotel near a dead body. “This happened despite all of the security precautions in place.”

The scene at the site was grisly, with the front sheared off the five-story building that once housed diplomats, journalists and visiting heads of state. It was a frightening reminder of the decades of conflict in Mogadishu that once left much of the city as rubble.

Desperate relatives searched the bloodstained rubble with their bare hands, looking for survivors, while to the side lay a large sack of body parts.

The bomb was made of a ton of explosives and destroyed dozens of nearby homes.

“It’s a criminal and cowardly act but that will not disrupt our struggle toward peace,” said Somali foreign minister Abdisalam Omer.

Security officials link the attack to setbacks by Al Shabab. The militant group has been driven out of Mogadishu and strongholds in the countryside by combined African Union and Somali forces.

The hotel has also been the target of Al Shabab attacks in the past, including in 2012 when suicide bombers stormed the hotel while president Mohamud was inside.

* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse