Somalia’s leader taken to presidential complex after attack

Somalia’s newly elected president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has been moved to the secure presidential compound following an assassination bid at his hotel, officials said on Thursday.

Hassan was unharmed after two blasts went off on Wednesday outside the hotel where he had been meeting a visiting Kenyan delegation, but three soldiers were killed in what appeared to be an attack by multiple suicide bombers.

A spokesman for the African Union Mission in Somalia, Colonel Ali Houmed, said the new head of state who was elected on Monday is now staying at Villa Somalia, which was still home to outgoing president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

Western observers had said they were surprised the new president was housed in a hotel – even if it was just a few hundred metres from the capital’s well-protected airport, which is Amisom’s main base – rather than at Villa Somalia.

A Somali security official confirmed to reporters that the new leader had been taken to the Villa Somalia a few hours after the attack claimed by Shebab Islamist extremists.

Sharif will stay with Hassan, who garnered 70 per cent of the votes in Monday’s election, at Villa Somalia until the official handover on Sunday, he said.

Hassan survived the twin blasts that hit the hotel he had moved into on Monday and where he was meeting Somalis and foreign delegations.