Bomb kills at least 300 in Somalia
SOME STILL MISSING: DEATH TOLL WILL RISE AFTER MOGADISHU’S BIGGEST BLAST
Nobody has claimed responsibility, but al-Shabaab attack suspected.
Mogadishu
More than 300 people died after twin bomb explosions in Mogadishu, an official said yesterday, as locals packed hospitals in search of friends and relatives caught up in Somalia’s deadliest attack in a decade.
The death toll has steadily risen since Saturday, when the blasts struck at two busy junctions in the heart of the city.
“We have confirmed 300 people died in the blast. The death toll will still be higher because some people are still missing,” Abdikadir Abdirahman, the director of the city’s ambulance service, said yesterday.
Aden Nur, a doctor at the city’s Madina hospital, said they had recorded 258 deaths while Ahmed Ali, a nurse at the nearby Osman Fiqi hospital, said five bodies had been sent there.
Nur said 160 of the bodies could not be recognised.
Some of the injured were being evacuated by air to Turkey for treatment, officials said.
Locals visiting injured relatives or collecting bodies filled the Madina hospital.
“My last time to speak with my brother was some minutes before the blast occurred,” Halima Nur, a local mother, said.
“I am afraid he was among the unrecognised charred bodies that were buried yesterday. I have no hope of getting him alive or dead. But I cannot go home.”
Saturday’s bomb attacks were the deadliest since Islamist militant group al-Shabaab began an insurgency in 2007.
Nobody has claimed responsibility, but al-Shabaab, which is allied to al-Qaeda, stages regular attacks in the country. The group is waging an insurgency against Somalia’s UN-backed government and its African Union allies in a bid to impose its own strict interpretation of Islam. – Reuters