The president of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, has confirmed this Sunday the death of 100 people while another 300 have been injured by the simultaneous explosion of two bombs in the capital, Mogadisco, just before armed men staged an assault against the headquarters of the Ministry of Education in the city; an attack claimed by the jihadist organization Al Shabaab.
According to the authorities, everything indicates that the explosions were caused by two car bombs located near the Ministry’s headquarters in an attack that began around 2:00 p.m. local time. The second of them, when the emergency services and the population began to attend to the wounded from the first detonation.
In a first balance, police spokesman Mohamed Dahir explained that most of the deceased are civilians, including women and children. Many of the injured are in critical condition. The spokesman has indicated that at least four attackers broke into the Ministry and their situation is unknown.
From the beginning, the Police have blamed the attack on Al Shabaab, the most active in the country and one of the most dangerous on the continent. According to the security forces, the jihadists caused the two explosions, before entering the headquarters of the Ministry, according to sources from the newspaper ‘Somali Times’, located on Sobe Road, a busy area with commercial areas around it.
Among the deceased is the journalist Mohamed Isse Koona, 29, as confirmed by the Somalia Journalists Union on its Twitter account. Other colleagues have been injured: the reporter Abdul Qadir, from the Voice of America and the photojournalist Faisal Omar, from the Reuters agency, who was eating in a nearby restaurant hit by the attack.
“We are still finishing compiling the total losses of the brutal attack launched by these beasts but we reiterate that the security forces and the Government of Somalia remain committed to the fight to eliminate this enemy,” said police spokesman Sadik Dodishe.
As the authorities expected, the group, linked to Al Qaeda, ended up claiming responsibility for the attacks through its radio station and propaganda channel, Al Andalus.
Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre has already expressed his condolences to the victims of the attack. “I think of the families of those who have died and those who have been injured in today’s barbaric attacks. My government will continue to fight and eliminate the terrorist group Al Shabaab,” he said.
The UN Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) has also “strongly” condemned the “merciless attack” by Al Shabaab and has sent its condolences to the families of the victims. “We strongly support the Somalis against terrorism,” he stressed in a brief message posted on Twitter.
It so happens that the place of the suicide attack is the Zoobe crossing, the same place where, on October 14, 2017, more than 587 people died and hundreds more were injured in the explosion of a truck bomb, considered the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history.
