Somali militants launch suicide attack, take hostages at Mogadishu hotel

Somalians assist a civilian injured in a terrorist attack on a Mogadishu hotel

(Image credit: Farah Abdi Warsameh/Associated Press)

published 25 June 2016

A group of militants suspected to be from Somalia's al Shabaab Islamist terrorist organization launched an attack on a hotel popular among government officials in the country's capital of Mogadishu on Saturday.

The assault began when a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle by the gate of Hotel Nasa Hablod, after which additional fighters rushed inside the building, firing weapons. "We attacked the hotel which was frequented by the apostate government members," an al Shabaab spokesman told Reuters.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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