At least 15 people were killed on June 25 when gunmen stormed Naso Hablod hotel in Mogadishu after a suicide bomber detonating a car filled with explosives at the hotel’s gate.

The attack came three weeks after suspected Al-Shabaab gunmen set off an explosion and stormed another popular Mogadishu hotel, killing at 13 people. Two members of parliament, Mohamed Mohamud Gurre and Abdullahi Jama, were among those killed at Ambassador Hotel that is popular for Somali politicians and Westerners.

Attacks in the capital have increased in frequency after about a year of relative lull.

Northern Kenya also experienced increased attacks by the Al-Shabaab. Six people were killed recently when Al-Shabaab ambushed two commuter buses in Mandera County near the Somalia border.

The head of the African Union Mission in Somalia, Francisco Caetano Madeira, expressed concern in a recent interview with The EastAfrican that Al Shabaab has split itself into small groups and mingled with the population posing a major challenge facing African peacekeepers.

The African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) has been maintaining that Al- Shabaab had been weakened after it was driven from Mogadishu and lost sources of income such as the charcoal trade and the port of Kismayu.

But Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, a presidential candidate in the August 20 elections said that Al Shabaab continues to tax all private businesses in Mogadishu and in other major towns through threats that are issued over the phone.

Mr Warsame says that the biggest problem is that the Somalia National Army is too weak to maintain law and order in the liberated territories.

“The plan was for Amisom to capture new territories and move forward while the Somalia security forces were to maintain the captured areas as Amisom move forward.

Source: The East African