Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/453115
WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT WEDNESDAY EDITION WEDNESDAY • 28 JANUARY 2015 • ISSUE 400 • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY €1.00 Newspaper post Editorial - PAGE 10 CONTINUES ON PAGES 2,3 SUICIDE BOMBERS ATTACK CORINTHIA MATTHEW VELLA THE spectre of terrorism haunting the Mid- dle East edged a step closer to the Mediter- ranean when suicide bombers allegedly linked to the Islamic State's Tripoli branch, detonated a car bomb and attacked staff at the Corinthia Bab Africa hotel in a barrage of gunfire. At 9am, three security guards outside the Maltese-owned property were killed as a group of armed men, as many as five, detonat- ed the car bomb and then entered the hotel. Hassan al-Abey, a corporate sales manager at the hotel, told the Wall Street Journal that five masked attackers wearing bulletproof vests stormed the hotel, shooting in the air. Bloomberg reported that an American citi- zen and a cleaner from the Philippines died inside the hotel, quoting Colonel Guma El Missry, another security official. One gunman was arrested, state-run Lana news agency reported. The hotel had Italian, British and Turk- ish guests, but was largely empty at the time of the attack. No diplomatic missions were present inside. Seven or eight United States nationals were also present in the hotel and evacuated. After the terrorists made their way to the hotel lobby, they eventually reached the 21st floor of the hotel, before Libyan security forc- es made their way inside. A shoot-out ensued, but the grisly end to the siege was decided by the terrorists themselves, when they detonat- ed explosives they were carrying on them. Corinthia said that it managed to evacuate the entire building, relocating its Maltese staff to a safe zone in Janzour's Palm City vil- lage, which the hotel chain owns. The company denied there had been a hos- tage situation in the hotel, as some reports suggested. Corinthia hotel CCTV stills showed the ter- rorists walking through the corridors of the top floor. Throughout the siege, affiliates of Islamic State or 'Daesh' as it is known in the Middle East, tweeted messages of support for the gunmen. As early as 8:22am local time, tweets were suggesting in no uncertain terms that an "urgent storming" had taken place inside the Corinthia hotel, pointing out that the hotel housed diplomatic missions and security companies. Another Twitter account, which was later taken down, tweeted that the hotel operation was dubbed the 'Sheikh Abu Anas Libi inva- sion'. At 11am, it was confirmed in an official IS-style breaking news alert that the Tripoli branch had carried out an incursion "against the apostate army and police close to the gates of the Corinthia Hotel" in the name of Sheikh Abu Anas Al Liby. Two of the gunmen caught on Corinthia CCTV images (top), and below, the explosion of the car bomb outside the Corinthia Hotel. The photo to the right, released on Twitter, was taken from inside the hotel after the bodies of the suicide bomgers were discovered