The DusitD2 Nairobi hotel, which is managed by Dusit International, has closed its operation until further notice, according to a statement posted on the group’s website.

At least one suicide bomber blew himself up at the hotel in Nairobi on January 15, while gunmen sprayed fire before engaging security forces and holding themselves up on the premises as civilians fled or barricaded themselves in their offices awaiting rescue, AFP reported. The attack ended this morning.

“We have 15 people dead as of now and that includes foreigners,” said a police source. After 12 hours trapped inside the complex, a group of dozens of people was freed.

According to the group’s statement, the management and staff were devastated by the incident.

“We are extremely saddened by this act of violence and would like to extend our deepest sympathies to all those affected,” read the statement. “Our highest concern is the safety and well-being of our guests and employees, and we are providing every support we can. The Royal Thai Embassy, Nairobi, Kenya has confirmed that all Thai staff are safe.”

The local authorities have taken control of the complex and are dealing with the situation, the statement said. “We are in constant contact with the authorities and would like to thank them for their swift response.”

The guests and upcoming reservations were being relocated to other hotels in the city, and the hotel was closed until further notice, it read.

    A number of businesses promoting their small towns as remote tourist destinations in the northeastern state of Queensland complain of cases where a typical six-hour drive has been estimated by Google Maps to take up to 11 hours.

The complaints prompted the Queensland government to write to Google, which on Wednesday promised to look into the issue.

“People aren’t coming to places because they think it takes too long, or they’re missing opportunities to refuel and they’re getting sent off on another road that has no fuel,” Robyn Mackenzie, of the Eromanga Natural History Museum, told national broadcaster ABC.

    “People will get frightened of travelling in the outback because they don’t have any confidence in the mapping,” the general manager of the small town museum added.

Peter Homan of the Queensland Outback Tourism Association told AFP that people were put off by inaccuracies of “anywhere up to six or seven hours” in the driving times provided by Google Maps.

He said mapping errors in the sparse outback had also directed people off main roads and on to vast private properties that can spread over eight million acres (32,400 square kilometres) — roughly the size of Belgium.

“Sometimes you can drive for half a day before you actually see anything that is going to alert you that you are not on the road to where you want to go, but that you’re on someone’s property because it is so big.”

The complaints from a region reeling from years of severe drought prompted the state government to write to Google this week.

“We are so dependent on these apps now to get us around cities, to get us around towns and to get us around big states like Queensland,” acting Queensland premier Cameron Dick told the ABC.

“We need to ensure that those apps and the information they are providing are as accurate as possible.”

Google, which says it takes its mapping data from a variety of sources, including public information and data from users, said it was investigating the concerns.

“Google Maps strives to accurately model and reflect the real world,” the company said in a statement.

“We are investigating to see what may have happened here and will take the appropriate action. We apologise if any businesses or communities have been affected negatively due to errors on the map.”

People unprepared for the extreme conditions have been lost in the Aussie outback, which has prompted calls for greater network coverage in remote areas and for authorities to warn the public to carefully plan for the tough environment.

Gunshots rang out sporadically in the capital as police tried to rescue survivors and flush out the attackers, however it was unclear how many were still hiding inside the complex.

After 12 hours trapped inside the complex, a group of dozens of people was freed at 3:30am (1230GMT), according to an AFP journalist on the scene, followed by fresh gunfire and a detonation.

The attack at the DusitD2 compound, which includes a 101-room hotel, spa, restaurant, and offices for local and international companies, began at 3:00 pm on Tuesday with a massive explosion, heard five kilometres (three miles) away at the AFP bureau.

The Al-Qaeda-linked Somali group Al-Shabaab, which carried out a notorious assault on a Nairobi shopping mall in 2013, claimed responsibility for the latest strike, according to the SITE Intelligence Group which monitors jihadist activities.

Kenyan police chief Joseph Boinnet said the attack began with an explosion targeting three cars in the parking lot and a suicide bombing in the foyer of the Dusit hotel.

He said “a number of guests suffered serious injuries” but did not give a figure for fatalities.

An AFP photographer saw the bodies of five dead, slumped over tables on a restaurant terrace in the complex. An official at the MP Shah hospital in Nairobi told Citizen TV seven wounded had been admitted, one of whom had died.

Meanwhile a police source, who asked not to be named, said he had seen as many as 14 dead.

Among the dead was an American citizen, a State Department official said.

– ‘Very confident’ attackers –

As the explosion and gunfire rang out in the leafy Westlands suburb, hundreds of terrified office workers barricaded themselves in the complex while some fled.

“We have no idea what is happening. Gunshots are coming from multiple directions,” said Simon Crump, an employee at an international firm who was hiding with his colleagues.

Crump was among a first wave of people evacuated from the office buildings surrounding the Dusit hotel after an hour of sustained gunfire as elite security forces engaged the gunmen.

A number of heavily-armed foreign forces, who appeared to be from embassies based in Nairobi, were at the scene alongside Kenyan security officers.

One survivor rescued from the building, speaking to a local television station, said the attackers were “very confident; they were people who knew what they were doing”.

CCTV footage broadcast on local television stations showed four attackers, clad all in black and heavily armed, entering a courtyard in the compound at the start of the attack.

– ‘A flash and a bang’ –

John Maingi said there had been “a flash of lights and a loud bang” at the Secret Garden restaurant where he works.

“When I peeped outside I saw a human leg which has been cut off. We hid in the room and then some police officers rescued us,” he said.

Reuben Kimani, a barista who was rescued after several hours trapped inside the hotel, said he had recognised one of the attackers as a client he had served coffee to in recent days.

“I knew one of them because he had a big scar on one of his hands,” he said. “I saw them. They shot six of my friends, four didn’t die but two succumbed.”

Several Nairobi establishments popular with westerners, such as the J’s and Alchemist bars and the Village Market shopping centre, announced on social media that they had closed for security reasons.

– Shabaab –

The attack at DusitD2 is the first in Nairobi since gunmen stormed the city’s Westgate shopping mall in 2013, killing at least 67 people. The attack and ensuing siege lasted about four days.

That assault was also claimed by Somalia’s Shabaab, fighting since 2007 to overthrow the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu.

The Westgate attack resulted in many upscale establishments and shopping centres in the capital — including the Dusit — putting up strict security barriers to check cars and pedestrians.

The Shabaab targeted Kenya after it sent its army into Somalia in October 2011 to fight the jihadist group.

On April 2, 2015, another Shabaab attack killed 148 people at the university in Garissa, eastern Kenya.

In its statement, the group noted the attack came exactly three years after its fighters overran a Kenyan military base in Somalia.

“This attack on Nairobi hotel came as Kenyans and their media are commemorating (the) El Adde attack,” it said.

The Shabaab claimed it killed more than 200 soldiers in that assault. The government has refused to give a toll or disclose details.

MPs voted 432 to 202 against May’s plan for taking Britain out of the European Union, the biggest parliamentary defeat for a government in modern British political history.

With a deal that took nearly two years to craft in tatters and her government’s future hanging in the balance, EU leaders sounded a note of exasperation, urging Britain to come out and say what it actually wants.

“If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?” EU president Donald Tusk tweeted.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, warned of a heightened risk of a “no deal” Brexit — an outcome that could disrupt trade, slow down the UK economy, and wreak havoc on the financial markets.

The government of Ireland — the only EU member state with a land border with Britain — said it would now intensify preparations to cope with a “disorderly Brexit”.

And German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, representing the EU’s most dominant economy and leading political voice, called the vote “a bitter day for Europe”.

– ‘Catastrophic’ defeat –

Most lawmakers have always opposed Brexit, as have some leading members of the government, creating a contradiction that has been tearing apart Britain ever since a June 2016 referendum began its divorce from the other 27 EU states.

Moments after Tuesday’s outcome, which was met with huge cheers by hundreds of anti-Brexit campaigners who watched the vote on big screens, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn submitted a motion of no-confidence in May’s government, calling her defeat “catastrophic”.

The vote is expected on Wednesday at 1900 GMT.

May sought to strike a conciliatory tone, telling MPs they had the right to challenge her leadership and promising to hold more talks to salvage a workable solution by the rapidly approaching March 29 Brexit deadline.

She promised to hold discussions with MPs from across parliament to identify ideas “that are genuinely negotiable and have sufficient support in this House”.

“If these meetings yield such ideas, the government will then explore them with the European Union.”

Downing Street said May will then return to parliament with a new Brexit proposal on Monday.

– ‘Political poker’ –

With their nation again in turmoil, noisy supporters and opponents of Brexit, rallied outside the ancient parliament building in London.

“It could end up being the day that will lead to us leaving with no deal!” said 25-year-old Simon Fisher, who backs a swift and sharp break with the EU.

A much larger rally nearby in support of a second referendum turned Parliament Square, dotted with statues of past UK leaders, into a sea of EU flags.

Economists said the scale of May’s defeat — on the upper end of most predictions — now also put pressure on Brussels to make more meaningful compromises.

The pound surged higher against the dollar and euro after the vote, seemingly buoyed by May’s promise to seek a compromise with her opponents.

“Markets project beliefs and the underlying belief is that nobody’s going to be committing economic suicide,” BK Asset Management’s Boris Schlossberg said.

But businesses voiced alarm about the outcome, which does nothing to resolve uncertainty that has been dampening the UK investment climate for months.

“Financial stability must not be jeopardised in a game of high-stakes political poker,” warned Catherine McGuinness, policy chair at the City of London Corporation, the body governing the British capital’s massive financial district.

– ‘Warm words not enough’ –

May made it her mission to carry out the wishes of voters after she became prime minister a month after the referendum, putting aside her own initial misgivings and stating repeatedly that “Brexit means Brexit”.

But her deal raised concern that Britain could end up locked in an unfavourable trading relationship with the EU.

Criticism of the deal was focused on an arrangement to keep open the border with Ireland by aligning Britain with some EU trade rules, if and until London and Brussels sign a new economic partnership — a tortuous process that could take several years.

Arlene Foster, head of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party upon which May relies for her parliamentary majority, said May needed to win binding concessions from Brussels to secure her vote.

“Reassurances whether in the form of letters or warm words, will not be enough,” said Foster.

“The prime minister must now go back to the European Union and seek fundamental change to the Withdrawal Agreement.”

Speculation is growing on both sides of the Channel that May could ask to delay Britain’s divorce from the EU after almost half a century of membership.

But a diplomatic source told AFP any extension would not be possible beyond June 30, when the new European Parliament will be formed.