MOGADISHU, 31 Oct 2022:
The death toll from two car bombs at a busy junction in the Somalian capital a day earlier has risen to 100, president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said yesterday.
“So far, people who died have reached 100 and 300 are wounded. The number for both the death and wounded continues to rise.”
The Saturday attack occurred some 1.5km from the Jazeera Palace Hotel, where president Mohamud, prime minister Hamza Abdi Barre, and the leaders of the five federal member states were meeting, said police spokesperson Sadik Dodishe.
The president had convened the meeting in Mogadishu with the state leaders to promote peaceful coexistence and discuss extremist threats.
Dodishe said the apparent target was the president but the attackers could not reach the venue and detonated the bombs packed in two cars near the education ministry at the busy Zoobe junction.
The Somali police spokesperson said women and children were among the dead.
Somali Islamist group al-Shabab claimed the attack, warning to continue hitting government infrastructure.
Mohamud said the massacred “included mothers with their children in their arms, fathers who had medical conditions, students who were sent to study, businessmen who were struggling with the lives of their families.”
The president said it was a “cruel and cowardly terrorist attack on innocent people by the morally bankrupt and criminal al-Shabab group.”
Mohamud said such attacks could not “discourage us but will further strengthen our resolve to defeat them once and for all.”
“Our government and brave people will continue to defend Somalia against evil.”
He said the authorities were still counting the dead.
According to police sources cited by local media and the Somali Journalists Union, the deceased included a police commander and a well-known Somali journalist.
A Reuters photojournalist and a Voice of America contributor also suffered wounds.
In October 2017, 587 people died at the same Zoobe intersection hit by a truck bomb attack.
The country in the horn of Africa has seen an escalation in violence in the backdrop of president Mohamud declaring a “total war” against al-Shabab in August.
The vow came a day after the group staged a deadly hotel siege in Mogadishu that killed 21 people and wounded more than 100 others.
The militant group has often claimed responsibility for the attacks in the capital.
The al-Qaeda affiliate aims to expel all foreign forces from Somalia and establish a strict Islamic state.
Somalia has been in a state of war since 1991 when the toppling of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre left the country without an effective government and vulnerable to Islamic militants, warlords, and criminal groups.
The group controls rural areas of central and southern Somalia and also conducts attacks in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia.
Separately in Jerusalem, at least five soldiers were injured in an alleged car-ramming attack in the occupied West Bank yesterday amid a flare-up of violence in the region.
“An assailant accelerated his vehicle toward IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) soldiers who were at a bus station,” a military spokesman said, specifying that incident took place at Nabi Musa Junction.
The driver fled the scene and tried to run over other soldiers at another junction before he was shot and arrested by a police officer.
Magen David Adom emergency service reported the five soldiers were transferred to hospitals in Jerusalem following the attack.
This incident comes after an Israeli settler was killed and four others injured in a gun attack in Kiryat Arba settlement Saturday night. The attacker was later shot dead by a local security guard.
Early on Friday, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers after what the military called a drive-by shooting on a military post.
Some 136 Palestinians and 23 Israelis have been killed in violent incidents so far this year, the deadliest since 2015.
– EFE