On February 28th 2019, a suicide car bomb detonated at a hotel in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, leaving 29 dead and 80 wounded.
The blast hit the Maka Al-Mukarama hotel and was followed by a gun battle which continued overnight into the following day. The final gunman was killed Friday evening, almost 24 hours after the initial attack.
The attack has been claimed by Al Shabaab.
It is currently unclear how many casualties resulted from the car bomb and how many from the gun battle.
Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) records casualties (i.e. people killed and injured) from explosive violence around the world as reported in English-language news sources.
In 2018, Somalia was one of the countries that saw a significant decrease in civilian harm from explosive violence (with a 48% decrease in civilian casualties from 1,582 to 825). Nevertheless, Somalia was still the sixth worst impacted country from explosive weapons, with 825 civilian casualties from such violence.
Of these civilian casualties, 94% were caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – 64% were from incidents using suicide attacks.
AOAV calls for states and international organisations to work collaboratively to generate greater awareness of the number of civilians killed and injured each year by IEDs, and encourage a greater stigma from political, religious and social leaders on the use of IEDs. There is an urgent need for preventative measures to be implemented by States and the international community.
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