Frantic relatives hope for news

Families invade hospitals in hunt for missing loved ones after Somalia blast toll hits 300

DESPERATE Somalis packed hospitals in search of news of loved ones yesterday, as an official said more than 300 people had been killed by twin bomb explosions in the country’s deadliest attack.

The death toll had steadily risen since Saturday, when the blasts struck at two busy junctions in the heart of the capital, Mogadishu.

One truck bomb detonated near a fuel truck, creating a huge fireball.

The bomb attacks were the deadliest since Islamist militant group alShabaab began an insurgency in 2007. The group has not claimed responsibility, but the method and type of attack – a large truck bomb – is increasingly used by the al-Qaeda-linked organisation.

“We have confirmed 300 people died in the blast. The death toll will still be higher because some people are still missing,” the director of the city’s ambulance service, Abdikadir Abdirahman, said.

A doctor at the city’s Madina hospital, Aden Nur, said they had recorded 258 deaths and that 160 of the bodies could not be recognised.

“[They] were buried by the government yesterday [Sunday]. The others were buried by their relatives,” he said.

Turkey sent a military plane full of medical supplies to Mogadishu yesterday, also evacuating some of the injured for treatment.

Residents visiting their injured relatives or collecting their bodies filled every available space in Madina hospital.

“My last time to speak with my brother was some minutes before the blast occurred,” Halima Nur, a 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.”

Abdullahi Aden, 56, said five of his cousins had died. “The shop completely collapsed on them. I could not help them. I could not hear their screams and the nearby buildings were burning,” he said.

He was still searching for two other relatives.

Residents of the Somali capital, while wearily accustomed to regular bombs and attacks by Islamist militants, have been left stunned by the monster explosion on Saturday which gutted surrounding buildings and left many of the victims burnt beyond recognition.

The government said it had set up an emergency committee to help relatives find the missing, with a crisis centre in the capital that residents could turn to.

Abdulahi Nuradin was one of many helping friends and family hunting for news of the missing.

“It has been more than 24 hours now and we don’t have any traces or information about the sister of my friend. We can assume she is dead, with her flesh somewhere amongst the horribly burnt dead bodies,” he said.

“We went to several hospitals to seek any information but no to avail. I saw so many severed pieces of human flesh at the hospitals, you cannot even look at them.”

Government official Muhidin Ali called the devastation something beyond the imagination of humankind.

Al-Shabaab has a history of not claiming attacks of which the scale provokes massive public outrage.

Saturday’s blast, the worst in Somalia’s history, came six years after al-Shabaab militants were pushed out of Mogadishu by African Union and Somali troops. The militants still control rural areas.

Hundreds of people, chanting anti-violence slogans and wearing red or white bandanas in a show of grief, took to the streets of Mogadishu on Sunday to condemn the deadly attack. – Reuters and AFP