MOGADISHU, Somalia, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- An attack by Islamic militants on a luxury hotel in Somalia's capital killed 25 people and wounded another 40, according to officials.
Two members of Somalia's parliament and the deputy mayor of Mogadishu are among the dead after a car bomb breached the main gate of the Central Hotel on Friday, allowing another suicide bomber to detonate inside.
Gunmen then stormed the building, where government ministers were meeting at the time. Al-Shabab claimed credit for the attack.
"We have killed more than 20 senior officials working for the apostate government," al-Shabab military operations spokesman Abdiaziz abu Musab told Al Jazeera. "They gathered thinking they were safe from the mujahideen."
Witness Abdulaziz Bile said a large explosion shook the area at the outset of the attack. "I survived but I saw several people who were lying dead," he told Al Jazeera. "The scene is very ugly, with blood and flesh everywhere."
Al-Shabab is an al-Qaida affiliated extremist group that seized a large portion of southern Somalia in 2006 before its defeat by Somali and Ethiopian troops the following year. Since then it has waged a bloody insurgency in the region, claiming credit for a series of bombings and other attacks.
The group has been successful at killing Somalia politicians before; earlier this month it claimed responsibility for the shooting death of a member of the country's parliament outside his home near the presidential palace in Mogadishu.
Late last month the group claimed a car bombing that killed six people at a different hotel in Mogadishu one day before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to visit the country.
