12 Dead in Somali Hotel Attack

At least 12 people were killed Sunday in a hotel attack in Somalia.

"Attackers exploded a car bomb to gain entry before going inside... we have reports of 12 dead," police officer Abdulrahid Dahir told AFP.

The attack began with two explosions, followed by fierce fighting between the attackers and security forces.

"Fighters with machines guns are firing at us from the rooftop of the hotel," Major Osman Ali, a police officer, told Reuters.

At the time of writing, clashes between unidentified attackers and Somali security forces were continuing in country's capital, Mogadishu, with fighters targeting the Sahafi hotel.

According to AFP, the hotel is frequented by government employees and wealthy business visitors.

The same hotel was attacked by militant group al-Shabab in 2009. No group has claimed responsibility for the latest attack, though al-Shabab has carried out a series of strikes on hotels in Mogadishu in recent years, using similar tactics.

RELATED: Al-Shabab in Context

Commanding as many as 6,000 fighters, al-Shabab is one of Africa's most powerful al-Qaida-linked organizations. The group has a long list of human rights violations to its name, including killing civilians and targeting aid workers. The organization began as the youth-wing of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which took control of most of southern Somalia and the capital Mogadishi in 2006.

The ICU rivaled the African Union-backed Somali transitional government (now the Federal Government of Somalia), and vowed to establish stable governance in the war-torn country for the first time in over a decade. In late 2006, the ICU lost most of its territory in an Ethiopian sponsored transitional government offensive. As the ICU collapsed in the following months, al-Shabab emerged as a hard-line splinter group. In 2012, they declared allegiance to al-Qaida.