Mogadishu: Last night Al-Shabaab stormed and laid siege to a popular spot near the presidential palace. On Monday, Somalia's security forces opened fire on terrorists hiding in a hotel in Mogadishu.

After dawn, sporadic gunfire and explosions could still be heard near the Villa Rose, a hotel in a safer area of ​​Mogadishu that is popular with lawmakers and government officials.

Police said late on Sunday that after the Villa Rose was bombarded with gunfire and explosions, government forces were attempting to "eliminate" several armed terrorists inside.

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Sadiq Dudishe, a spokesman for the national police, said several civilians and government employees had been rescued but gave no other details.

Two large explosions were reported by eyewitnesses, followed by a hail of gunfire that caused residents of Bondhere district to flee the area. The hotel is just a few blocks from Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud's office in Somalia.

The attack was carried out according to al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group that has been attempting to topple Somalia's government for 15 years.

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In a statement released late Sunday, the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), a 20,000-strong military force made up of soldiers from across the continent, praised the "swift" security response to the attack.

With metal detectors and a tall perimeter wall, Villa Rose describes itself on its website as "the most secure accommodation in Mogadishu".

Al-Shabaab has increased its attacks on military and civilian targets as Somalia's newly elected government pursues a policy of "all-out war" against the Islamists.

In recent months, security forces have driven al-Shabaab from the country's central regions with the aid of local militias, ATMIS and US airstrikes, but the offensive has triggered a counterattack.

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On 29 October, two bomb-laden cars exploded minutes apart in Mogadishu, followed by a shootout, killing at least 121 people and injuring 333 others.

The vulnerable country in the Horn of Africa had not experienced a fatal attack in five years.
In August a siege on a hotel in Mogadishu, which lasted 30 hours before security forces wrested control from militants inside, killed at least 21 people.

In Somalia this year, at least 613 civilians have been killed and 948 injured in violence, most of which was attributed to improvised explosive devices made by al-Shabaab, the United Nations reported earlier this month.

The figures were higher than in 2017 and were more than 30% higher than the previous year.