President Mohamud condoles with hotel attack victims, terms incident desperate

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has strongly condemned the attack at Sahafi hotel which claimed at least 13 lives and injured close to 30 others.

The president has also condoled with families, relatives and the nation at large reiterating his call for calm and assurance that the country’s security forces were doing their best to deter such incidences. The president also noted that Al-Shabaab was a disgruntled entity with aims of grabbing headlines through killing innocent people.

President Mohamud said as al-Shabaab is increasingly pushed out of their hiding places through the concerted and successful military actions of the Somali National Army and AMISOM, they seek to wreak havoc in our cities.

“Let me assure you, these are not the actions of a movement on the rise. On the contrary, this is the action of an increasingly desperate, internally-divided group of extremists. They are not sure what they stand for, or whom they are following, and seek to grab the headlines through killing innocent Muslims,” the president said.

The president assured the country security forces had taken control of the situations and that investigations on the matter will commence immediately.

Some minutes to six this morning, the first bomb went off ripping apart the left wing of Sahafi hotel at the heart of the city followed by a second one and then a hostage situation which lasted close to five hours.

Prominent personalities including a sitting MP, MP Abdi Mohamed Abtidoon, former Somali National Army commandant, Abdirisack Yussuf Badan and the hotel owner Abdirashid Shire Ilqeyte. An Al Jazeera stringer Mustaf Mushafa was killed while Reuters photojournalist Faisal Omar was injured.

The president said the best way to honour those who died in the incident was to renew and redouble efforts to ‘prevent extremists from distorting the faith of our fathers, and leading people astray in their quest for brutality and destruction. We must do this by confronting their warped ideology and liberating Somalia from them entirely,” added President Mohamud.

“It is the top priority of my government to improve the ability and capacity of the Somali security sector so that we can rid Somalia of extremists, protect our national interests and preserve the peace and state integrity of Somalia,” the President said.