2 bombs kill at least 30 in Somalia’s capital
Prime Minister blames Al Qaeda-affiliated Shabab extremist group for the attack.
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Two car bombs exploded Saturday at a busy junction in Somalia’s capital near key government offices, leaving “scores of civilian casualties,” including children, national police said. One hospital worker counted at least 30 bodies.
The attack in Mogadishu occurred on a day when the president, prime minister and other senior officials were meeting to discuss combating violent extremism, especially by the Al Qaeda-affiliated Shabab group that often targets the capital. The attack came five years after a massive blast in the same location killed more than 500 people.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The Shabab rarely claims attacks in which large numbers of civilians are killed, as in the 2017 blast. But Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre blamed the group by name.
A volunteer at the Madina Hospital, Hassan Osman,
said, “Out of the total of at least 30 dead people brought to the hospital, the majority of them are women. I have seen this with my own eyes.”
At the hospital, frantic relatives peeked under plastic sheeting and into body bags, looking for loved ones.
The Aamin ambulance service said it had collected at least 35 wounded. One ambulance responding to
the first attack was destroyed by the second blast, Abdulkadir Adan, director of the service, added in a tweet.
“I was 100 meters away when the second blast occurred,” witness Abdirazak Hassan said. “I couldn’t count the bodies on the ground due to the [number of] fatalities.” He said the first blast hit the perimeter wall of the Education Ministry,
where street vendors and money changers were working.
An Associated Press journalist at the scene said the second blast occurred in front of a busy restaurant at lunchtime. The blasts demolished tuk-tuks and other vehicles in an area with numerous restaurants and hotels. He saw “many” bodies and said they appeared to be civilians traveling on public transportation.
The Somali Journalists Syndicate, citing colleagues and police, said one journalist was killed and two others wounded by the second blast while rushing to the scene of the first.
The attack occurred at Zobe junction, which was the scene of the Shabab truck bombing in 2017 that killed more than 500.
Somalia’s government has been engaged in a highprofile offensive against the extremist group, which the United States has described as one of Al Qaeda’s deadliest organizations.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has described the offensive as “total war” against the extremists, who control large parts of central and southern Somalia and have been the target of scores of U.S. airstrikes in recent years.
The extremists have responded by killing prominent clan leaders in an apparent effort to dissuade support for the government offensive.
On Saturday, the prime minister said the attack would not dampen the public uprising against the Shabab and again expressed the government’s determination to wipe out the extremist group.