Al-Qaeda-linked militants have been waging an insurgency against the government for more than 15 years and have often targeted hotels MOGADISHU: Nine people were killed in an attack claimed by Al-Shabab terrorists at an upmarket restaurant in the Somali capital Mogadishu, police said. Those killed at the popular restaurant were six civilians and three soldiers, police said in a statement. Additionally, Abdikadir Abdirahman, director of Aamin ambulance service, said his group had carried 20 wounded people from the scene. Security forces rescued 84 civilians, police said. The Somali National News Agency said on Twitter that “security forces have successfully neutralized the Al-Shabab militants responsible for the terrorist attack on the Pearl Beach Hotel in Lido Beach, Mogadishu.” On Saturday, debris from the restaurant was strewn around the blood-stained street. Window panes were shattered. Hussein Mohammed, a waiter at another restaurant nearby, said he heard a blast followed by gunfire when the attack started. “The whole area is cordoned off by security forces,” he said. Al Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab said it was behind the attack. Al-Shabab controlled a vast area of Somalia before being pushed back in government counteroffensives since last year. However, the terrorists remain capable of launching significant attacks on government, commercial, and military targets. Friday’s assault began just before 8 p.m. when seven attackers stormed the hotel, a popular spot at Lido Beach along Mogadishu’s coastline. It ended at around 2 a.m, police said, after a fierce gunfight between security forces and the militants, all of whom were killed during the battle. “The security forces managed to rescue 84 people including women and children and elderly people,” the police statement added. Witnesses reported hearing gunfire and explosions at the hotel on Lido beach. “I was near the Pearl Beach restaurant when (a) heavy explosion occurred in front of the building,” said one witness, Abdirahim Ali. “I have managed to flee but there was heavy gunfire afterwards and the security forces rushed to the area.” Yaasin Nur was at the restaurant and said it was “full of people as it was recently renovated.” “I’m worried because there are several of my colleagues who went there and two of them are not responding to their phones,” he said. Several ambulances were also parked nearby, an AFP journalist saw. The attack at Lido beach underscored the endemic security problems in the Horn of Africa country as it struggles to emerge from decades of conflict and natural disasters. “The attack in a popular Mogadishu neighborhood is a bit of a shock, given that security was thought to be improving in recent weeks,” said Omar Mahmood, an analyst for Eastern Africa for the International Crisis Group. “It seems that Al-Shabab are undertaking a series of attacks in order to slow down a possible offensive by the government and its allies.” Last year, Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud launched an “all-out war” against Al-Shabab, rallying Somalis to help flush out members of the jihadist group he described as “bedbugs.” His pledge came after 21 people were killed and 117 others were wounded in an Al-Shabab siege on a Mogadishu hotel in August 2022 that lasted 30 hours. That attack raised serious questions about the security forces, who failed to protect a heavily guarded administrative district. Two months later, twin car bombings in Mogadishu killed 121 people and injured 333 in the country’s deadliest attack in five years. The army and militias known as “macawisley” have in recent months retaken swathes of territory in the center of the country in an operation backed by the African Union mission ATMIS and US airstrikes. In August 2020, Al-Shabab launched a large-scale attack on the Elite, another hotel at Lido beach popular with officials, killing 10 civilians and a police officer. It took security forces four hours to regain control of the site in that attack. The UN said in November that at least 613 civilians had been killed and 948 injured in violence in Somalia last year, mostly caused by improvised explosive devices attributed to Al-Shabab. The figures were the highest since 2017 and an increase of more than 30 percent from the previous year.