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Members of Somali parliament killed in bombing are identified

By the CNN Wire Staff
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • A bombing kills 4 lawmakers and injures 5 in Mogadishu
  • A total of 33 are killed in the attack
  • Islamist rebel group Al Shabaab claims responsibility for the bloodshed

(CNN) -- Somali officials released the names of the four members of parliament Wednesday who were killed in a bomb attack on Tuesday.

The deceased Somali Parliament members were Mohamed Hassan M. Nur, Geddi Abdi Gadid, Bulle Hassan Mo'allim and Idiris Muse Elmi.

Five other members of parliament were also wounded.

A government representative previously said six lawmakers were killed and three were injured.

At least 33 people died in the attack in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.

Two men stormed the Muna Hotel in Somalia's capital Mogadishu and detonated explosives, officials reported. The Islamist rebel group Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the bloodshed.

It is not the group's first attack against the transitional government of Somalia and the African Union troops that try to protect the government. However, even by Somali standards, the attack was shocking because the attackers were able to invade an area that the goverment and African Union peacekeepers had declared secure.

Al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Dhere said his group would not stop fighting until the AU peacekeeping troops leave Somalia.

Journalists said the attackers committed suicide after government security forces surrounded the Muna Hotel, located near the presidential palace.

"Just before 11 a.m. two attackers, a gunman and a suicide bomber gained access to a hotel in Mogadishu," according to Maj. Barigye Ba Hoku, spokesman for the African Union Mission in Somalia.

The assault on the hotel came as the death toll rose from some of the fiercest fighting in Somalia's capital in months.

Pitched battles between government forces and Al Shabaab militiamen have escalated in Mogadishu this week, leaving injured residents literally caught in the crossfire.

Ali Muse, head of Life Line Africa, a local Somali charity running the country's only private ambulance service, said Tuesday 11 students were trapped in a school.

"It is too dangerous for our ambulances to collect them," Muse said Tuesday.

Muse said gun battles were centered in Bakara Market, where many women live and hawk their goods to locals. The area is controlled by Al Shabaab.

"Many women have been killed," Muse said, adding that it is a "very crowded area."

Somalia was ranked in 2010 as the worst failed state in the world, according to Foreign Policy magazine's annual index of such nations. Chad and Sudan, respectively, round out the top three failed states.

CNN's Bettina Peter, David McKenzie, Les Neuhaus and journalist Mohamed Amiin Adow contributed to this report.