Mogadishu: At least 100 people were killed when two car bombs exploded on Saturday at a busy junction in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, near key government offices, causing “scores of civilian casualties” including children, national police said.
The country’s president on Sunday stated there were a number of fatalities and stated that over 300 people were injured.
The attack in Mogadishu occurred on a day when the president, prime minister and other senior officials were meeting to discuss expanded efforts to combat violent extremism, especially by the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab group that often targets the capital. It also came five years after another massive blast in the exact same location killed over 500 people.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Al-Shabab rarely claims attacks with large numbers of civilians killed, as in the 2017 blast. But President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud blamed al-Shabab by name, calling the attack “cruel and cowardly.”
A volunteer at the Medina 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 and elsewhere, frantic relatives peeked under plastic sheeting and into body bags, looking for loved ones.