Gunmen storm hotel in Somalia, kill at least 14

Islamic extremist group claims responsibility

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Gunmen stormed a hotel in Somalia’s seaside capital Saturday, taking guests hostage and “shooting at everyone they could see,” before security forces pursued the grenade-throwing assailants to the top floor and ended the hours-long assault, police and witnesses said. At least 14 people were killed.

Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the latest in a series of hotel attacks in Mogadishu, one that began with a powerful explosion at the entry gate.

“We have finally ended the siege. The last remaining militants were killed on the top floor,” police Capt. Mohamed Hussein said after security forces cornered the gunmen, who had set up sniper posts on the roof of the Nasa-Hablod hotel. Police said at least four gunmen were involved in the attack, and two were killed.

“We have so far confirmed the deaths of 14 people. Some of them died in the hospitals,” Hussein said. The deaths included women who were selling khat, a stimulant leaf popular with Somali men, outside the hotel, he said.

Security forces rescued most of the hostages; it was not clear whether any were killed. Police and medical workers said another nine people were wounded in the assault.

Police said the attack began when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the hotel entrance, ripping off its gate. Gunmen fought their way inside, and a witness said they began shooting randomly at hotel guests.

Blood was splattered on the hotel floor. The bodies of two men, including one thought to be a hotel guard and an attacker dressed in a military uniform, lay on the first floor.

Bullets pockmarked the hotel walls. Security forces combed through the hotel rooms for explosives.

A witness, Ali Mohamud, said the attackers randomly shot at guests. “They were shooting at everyone they could see. I escaped through the back door,” he said.

The Somalia-based, al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab has been waging a deadly insurgency across large parts of Somalia and often employs suicide car bomb attacks to penetrate heavily fortified targets in Mogadishu and elsewhere.

YEREVAN, Armenia — The world should never forget or minimize the Ottoman-era slaughter of Armenians, Pope Francis declared Saturday even as he urged Armenians to infuse their collective memory with love so they can find peace and reconcile with Turkey.

But Turkey didn’t budge. In its reaction to Francis’ recognition of the 1915 “genocide,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli called the comments “greatly unfortunate” and said they bore the hallmarks of the “mentality of the Crusades.”

Francis began his second day in Armenia by paying his respects at the country’s genocide memorial and greeting descendants of survivors of the 1915 massacres, who have been emboldened by his comments that the slaughter of Armenians a century ago was a planned “genocide” meant to annihilate an entire people.

Francis presented a wreath at the memorial and stood, head bowed, in silent prayer before an eternal flame as priests blessed him with incense and a choir sang haunting hymns.

“Here I pray with sorrow in my heart, so that a tragedy like this never again occurs, so that humanity will never forget and will know how to defeat evil with good,” Francis wrote in the memorial’s guest book. “May God protect the memory of the Armenian people. Memory should never be watered-down or forgotten. Memory is the source of peace and the future.”

Francis also greeted descendants of the 400 or so Armenian orphans taken in by Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI at the papal summer residence south of Rome in the 1920s. Also approaching Francis was Sosi Habeschyan, 68, and her sister; their mother was a genocide orphan adopted and raised by Danish missionary Maria Jacobsen, who worked in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and wrote about the massacre.

“A blessing has come down on the land of Mt. Ararat,” said Andzhela Adzhemyan, a 35-year old refugee from Syria who was a guest at the memorial. “He has given us the strength and confidence to keep our Christian faith no matter what.”

Francis returned to the theme of memory in a Mass in Gyumri, where several thousand people gathered in a square for his only public Catholic Mass of his three-day visit to Armenia.

Francis raised the importance of memory at an evening prayer in Yerevan’s Republic Square, which a crowds of 50,000, by Vatican estimates. With the patriarch of the Apostolic Church, Karekin II, by his side and President Serzh Sargsyan in the front row, Francis said even the greatest pain “can become a seed of peace for the future.”

“Memory, infused with love, becomes capable of setting out on new and unexpected paths, where designs of hatred become projects of reconciliation, where hope arises for a better future for everyone,” he said.

He called for Armenia and Turkey to take up the “path of reconciliation” and said, “May peace also spring forth in Nagorno-Karabakh.”