29 killed; security chiefs sacked

The death toll from a deadly attack on a hotel in Mogadishu rose to 29 yesterday, prompting the Somali government to sack its police and intelligence chiefs.

The move came after Al-Qaeda aligned Shabaab gunmen staged coordinated bomb attacks Saturday outside the Nasa Hablod Hotel 2 before storming the building.

Two weeks ago, Mogadishu was hit by a massive truck bombing that killed 358 people in the troubled country's worst-ever attack.

Saturday's carnage was unleashed when a car bomb exploded outside the hotel entrance followed by a minibus loaded with explosives going off at a nearby intersection.

The gunmen then rushed into the popular hotel, launching a siege that lasted several hours.

"So far I am sure 29 people died - the death toll may rise," Abdullahi Nur, a police officer, told Reuters.

At least 12 of the dead were police officers, Nur said. A woman was beheaded while her "three children were shot dead", he said.

A Reuters witness saw seven bodies lying inside the hotel.

Officials had initially given a toll of 14 dead, saying "most" of the casualties were civilians although a senior police official and a former MP were among them.

"Five gunmen stormed the building, two of them were killed and the rest captured alive," security ministry spokesman Abdiasiz Ali Ibrahim told reporters.

The Shabaab has made attacks on hotels -- commonly beginning with a suicide car bombing followed by an invasion by gunmen -- a regular strategy in its decade-long battle to overthrow successive internationally-backed governments in Mogadishu.