Al Shabaab militants kill 20 people in Somalia beach restaurant attack

MOGADISHU: At least 20 people were killed after five gunmen set off bombs and stormed a popular beach-front restaurant in Somalia, police said on Friday.

“They killed nearly 20 people, including women and children,” Somali police officer Mohamed Abdirahman said, describing it as a “barbaric and brutal attack against innocent civilians”.

Al Sh ab a ab, a militant group aligned with al Qaeda, said its fighters set off two car bombs at the Beach View Cafe on Mogadishu’s popular Lido beach, and engaged in a gun battle for hours with government troops trying to flush them out.

“The operation ended at 3 am last night and at least 17 civilians were killed,” police officer Osman Nur said on Friday.

Somalia’s security minister Abdirizak Omar Mohamed said four of the gunmen were killed and one was captured alive.

“The government forces rescued hundreds of civilians who were dining there,” he told staterun Radio Muqdisho.

Police said al Shabaab fighters set off the first car bomb at dusk. A huge second blast, which witnesses say echoed around the city centre, struck about an hour later.

Al Shabaab, which regularly targets hotels and restaurants in the capital, seeks to topple the Western-backed government and impose a strict version of Islamic law across Somalia, a nation racked by conflict since the outbreak of civil war in 1991.