At least 14 people are dead after a gun battle at the Sahafi hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia on Sunday, the New York Times reports. The Shabab militant group took responsibility for the attack.

According to the Times, Shabab fighters blew up the front gate to the hotel—previously haunted by warlords and militants but recently frequented by government officials and lawmakers—with a car bomb, storming the building, taking hostages, and engaging with security forces from the building’s rooftop.

From the Times:

Around dawn on Sunday, witnesses said, a car rammed into the Sahafi’s front gate and immediately exploded. Several Shabab fighters then scrambled into the hotel, shooting guests. A second car bomb exploded two hours later, wounding several journalists and other people who had rushed to the hotel, located at a busy traffic circle in central Mogadishu, to see what happened. One young journalist, Mustaf Abdinur Safaana, a freelance TV cameraman, was killed.

Among the other dead, witnesses said, were a Somali lawmaker, a Somali Army general and the hotel’s owner, Abdirashid Ilgayte, who used to welcome guests into his incense-scented office just off the hotel’s entrance and regale them with stories of violence and intrigue from Somalia’s darkest days.

“They have killed the owner of the hotel, a former military general and other officials during the attack,” police Captain Mohamed Hussein told Reuters. “There’s a hostage situation inside the hotel.” By 11 am, the Times reports, Somali forces, supported by African Union troops, shot and killed the militants.

The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shabab, which has lost ground in Somalia of late, is the group responsible for the attack on a Kenyan university earlier this year that left 147 dead. “We want to confirm that such terrorist acts does not mean Shabab’s revival, but in the contrary shows clear signs that they are in desperate situation,” Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said Sunday.

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.