FIVE al-Shabab extremists attacked the Sahafi Hotel in the Somalian capital Mogadishu at dawn yesterday, killing at least six people and injuring 10, before being killed by the police.

“It’s over now, we have killed all the attackers,” said police Commander Ali Ahmed. “They came under cover of darkness and attacked the hotel while some of the guards were sleeping.”

The attack began at daybreak when a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle laden with explosives at the hotel gate before four men armed with AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and suicide vests invaded the building.

Some entered rooms to kill residents while others went to the roof to fight government forces who came to fight the attackers, said police Captain Mohamed Hussein.

A second explosion came from a car bomb outside the hotel, witnesses said.

Security forces ended the siege by midday.

Among those killed were the hotel owner and a former army general, said Capt Hussein.

“Had it not been the courage of some of the hotel residents who fought back the terrorists, the death toll could have been a lot higher than it is now,” he added.

Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud condemned the attack, saying: “This is the action of an increasingly desperate, internally divided group of extremists … who seek to grab the headlines through killing innocent Muslims.”

He urged citizens “to prevent extremists from distorting the faith of our fathers and leading people astray in their quest for brutality and destruction.

“We must do this by confronting their warped ideology and liberating Somalia from them entirely.”