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In 2019, a similar attack at another hotel in Kismayu killed at least 26 people.

"There is a blast at Tawakal hotel and there is gunfire being heard," Mohamed Nur, a police captain, told Reuters from Kismayu.

"The security forces have besieged the scene," Farah Ali, a shopkeeper in Kismayu, told Reuters.

Al Shabaab was driven out of Kismayu in 2012.

A journalists’ group had confirmed on Friday that two journalists were among the dead; Somali-Canadian journalist Hodan Naleyah, the founder of Integration TV, and Mohamed Sahal Omar, reporter of SBC TV in Kismayu.