ASSOCIATED PRESS
People marched Sunday amid destruction at the scene of Saturday’s double bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia.
MOGADISHU, Somalia >> At least another hundred people were killed in two car bombings at a busy intersection in the capital, Somalia’s president said, and the death toll could be the country’s deadliest attack since a truck bomb at the same location five years ago killed more than 500.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, at the site of Saturday’s blasts in Mogadishu, told reporters that nearly three hundred other people were wounded. “We ask our foreign partners and Muslims around the world to send their doctors here because we cannot send all the sick out of the country for treatment,” he said.
The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab extremist organization, which targets the capital and controls large portions of the country, claimed responsibility and said its purpose was to attack the education ministry. He said the ministry was an “enemy base” receiving aid. of non-Muslim countries and “is committed to isolating young Somalis from the Islamic faith. “
Al-Shabab does not regularly claim its duty when large numbers of civilians are killed, as was the case with an October 2017 explosion at the same site, but it was infuriated by a new high-profile government offensive to shut down its monetary network. The organization said it was determined to fight until the country was governed by Islamic law, and called on civilians to stay away from government areas.
It quickly became clear how the explosive-laden cars had passed through a city full of checkpoints and always on alert for attacks.
Somalia’s president, elected this year, the country was still at war with al-Shabab, “and we are winning. “
The Mogadishu attack came on a day when the president, prime minister and other senior officials were meeting to discuss further efforts to counter violent extremism and, in particular, al-Shabab.
The attack hit rescuers in Somalia, which has one of the weakest fitness systems in the world after decades of conflict. In hospitals and elsewhere, terrified parents peeked under plastic sheets and frame bags, looking for the ones they enjoyed.
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