Somaliland: German-Somali behind Mogadishu’s Jazeera Hotel Blast

“The damage is big but a lot less because the truck bomb couldn’t go beyond the walls that lay a few meters from the hotel’s perimeter walls”, said Mohammed Abdi, a police officer. The individual identified was born in Bonn to the Somali diaspora and held dual citizenship.

The hotel is home to the diplomatic missions of China, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and is popular among Somali government officials and foreign visitors.

President Mohamud condemned Sunday’s bombing in a defiant response.

The White House also condemned the “abhorrent attack… which purposefully and cruelly targeted innocent civilians”.

“To track one person effectively takes at least 10, or more probably 15 people, which would cost at least £10,000 a day, not including other measures such as the monitoring of mobile phones and email traffic”. “His relatives knew about his presence in Somalia for the past several years and he fought alongside Shebab”, a source said.

The al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the Sunday afternoon attack on the Jazeera Palace Hotel near Mogadishu’s airport, frequented by government officials and aid workers.

“We have been able to decrease their effective control within Somalia and have weakened those networks operating here in East Africa”. Somali government and Amisom troops last week launched a fresh offensive aimed at flushing the insurgents out of rural areas in southern Somalia, in an operation also involving Ethiopian and Kenyan forces.

US coordination with African troops, including from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, has been “very efficient” and is partly responsible for the Somali government’s territorial gains, Mr Obama said on Monday.

“We can degrade significantly the capacity of the terrorist organisations, but they can still do damage”, he added. While African Union forces and the Somali army have dislodged the militants from large tracts of territory, al-Shabaab has proven capable of repeating striking the heart of the capital city.