MOGADISHU // Nearly 20 people were killed in an attack claimed by Al Shabab on a popular beachside restaurant in Somalia, police said on Friday, as neighbouring Kenya mourned soldiers killed by the Al Qaeda-linked group last week.
In the attack in Mogadishu, five gunmen detonated a bomb and stormed the busy restaurant, spraying gunfire at terrified customers late on Thursday. A party had been taking place when the attack started.
Security forces took control of the restaurant just before dawn, said police Captain Mohamed Hussein.
“They killed nearly 20 people, including women and children,” police officer Mohamed Abdirahman said, describing it as a “barbaric and brutal attack against innocent civilians”.
Somali prime minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke condemned the “savage” attack.
The Lido beach area in Mogadishu, which had symbolised the resurgence of Somalia’s capital in recent years, is full of restaurants, including upmarket establishments popular with business people and diaspora Somalis who have returned home to the city.
On a normal Friday, the beach would be packed with hundreds of people surfing, swimming and strolling along the white sand.
But on this day it had become a scene of bottomless grief.
The Lido Seafood restaurant was littered with bloodstained, overturned chairs, tables, shoes and bullet casings, the walls scarred from bullet impacts and blackened with soot.
On the beach itself, relatives identified the attack’s victims whose bodies were laid out on the sand, their heads covered by yellow tablecloths, many soaked with blood.
“It’s a sad day, whenever a hope comes up it gets dashed by such attacks. This city’s future is precarious,” said Mumina Ahmed, a Somali-American who returned to Mogadishu last week after 14 years in Virginia.
Abdirahman Halane was close to the restaurant when the gunmen attacked, and said some of those killed were hit by an explosion as they tried to flee.
“The gunmen entered the popular Lido Sea Food Restaurant from the back door and started shooting ... a few minutes later there was a heavy explosion at the front gate while people were trying to escape,” Mr Halane said.
“There was confusion, everybody started panicking, and some of them ran towards the gunmen and they were shot dead, I was lucky to escape.”
Another witness described how some of those killed had died in the large blast, while others were shot dead at point blank range.
“The fact that they have chosen this location during a weekend night shows how merciless the Shebab militants are,” said Somali police officer Mohamed Abdirahman.
Al Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, in which four of their gunmen were also killed, and one captured.
“The mujahedeen fighters targeted the Lido Beach,” the militants said on the group’s online Radio Andalus, calling it a “major operation against the enemy of Allah”.
Somali security minister Abdirizak Omar Mohamed said the suspected leader of the attack has been arrested.
The attack came a week after Al Shabab overran a Kenyan army base in Somalia, signalling the group’s resilience despite military setbacks inflicted by a US-backed regional force operating in the country.
The militant group said it had killed about 100 Kenyans in that attack, also seizing weapons and military vehicles.
Kenya has so far refused to say how many of its soldiers were killed, injured or remain missing, however.
Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday visited wounded soldiers recovering in hospital in the capital Nairobi and praised the “bravery and dedication” of the “fallen heroes” in an address to dignitaries and relatives of the dead and injured.
* Agence France-Presse, Associated Press
