Hundreds dead in truck bomb blast
AS THE the death toll from the most powerful bomb blast witnessed in Somalia’s capital continued to rise to more than 200, officials have regarded it as the bloodiest single attack in this Horn of Africa nation.
By late yesterday at least 231 people were dead and more than 275 injured.
Senator Abshir Abdi Ahmed said the toll comes from doctors at hospitals he has visited in Mogadishu. Many of the bodies in hospital mortuaries have not yet been identified, he said.
Doctors struggled to assist horrifically wounded victims, many burnt beyond recognition. Officials feared the toll would continue to climb after Saturday’s truck bomb that targeted a busy street near key ministries.
Bewildered families wandered in the rubble of buildings, looking for missing relatives. “In our 10-year experience as the first responder in #Mogadishu, we haven’t seen anything like this,” the Aamin Ambulance service tweeted. Grief overwhelmed many. “There’s nothing I can say. We have lost everything,” wept Zainab Sharif, a mother of four who lost her husband. She sat outside a hospital where he was pronounced dead after hours of efforts by doctors to save him from an arterial injury. President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed declared three days of mourning and joined thousands of people who responded to a desperate plea by hospitals to donate blood for the wounded victims. The hospital is overwhelmed by both dead and wounded.
“We received people whose limbs were cut away by the bomb. This is really horrendous, unlike any other time in the past,” said Dr Mohamed Yusuf, the director of Medina hospital.
Somalia’s government has blamed the al-Shabaab extremist group for the attack. It called the blast a “national disaster”.