Turkey sends plane to evacuate Somalia victims
Mogadishu, Somalia - A Turkish military plane arrived in Mogadishu on Sunday to evacuate those gravely wounded in a devastating bombing that killed 79 people and overwhelmed local health services, in the latest attack on a city dogged by insecurity.
The aircraft also brought doctors to help treat the some 125 people injured in Saturday’s blast, which happened when a vehicle packed with explosives detonated at a busy security checkpoint.
No group has claimed the bloody attack, however Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo has blamed terror group Al Shabaab which regularly carries out car bombings and other attacks on the capital, in their decade-long bid to topple the internationally-backed government.
Saturday’s bombing was the deadliest since a truck exploded in 2017 near a fuel tanker killing over 500 people.
Farmaajo pinned the attack on the ‘terrorist organisation Al Shabaab’ in a televised message and slammed it as an attempt to ‘intimidate and terrorise the Somali public and to massacre them at every opportunity available’. At least 16 of those killed were students from the capital’s private Banadir University, who had been travelling on a bus when the car bomb detonated at a busy intersection southwest of the Somali capital.
The director of the private Aamin Ambulance service, Abdukadir Abdirahman Haji, said around 125 people were injured, a number which has overwhelmed health services in the capital.
Somali police chief Abdi Hassan Mohamed said that 79 had died, but the toll could increase.
“There are still rescue operations going on to assist those who have been massacred by the terrorists while going about their business,” Somalia’s Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Heyr said. “We have received this morning doctors and medicine sent by the Turkish government and we are working to separate people seriously wounded from others in order to send them outside the country and the rest will be treated by the doctors,” he added.
The minister said about 24 doctors specialising in trauma had arrived from Turkey while Qatar was sending a similar aircraft on Monday to assist.