The death toll from Saturday’s truck bombing in Somalia’s capital is now over 300, the director of an ambulance service said yesterday, as the nation reeled from the deadliest attack it has ever experienced.
The death toll was expected to rise again as funerals began.
About 300 others were injured in truck bombing that targeted a crowded street in Mogadishu.
Somalia’s government is blaming the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab extremist group, which has not commented.
More than 70 critically injured people were being airlifted to Turkey for treatment yesterday as international aid began to arrive, officials said.
Overwhelmed hospitals in Mogadishu were struggling to assist other badly wounded victims, many burned beyond recognition.
The attack was one of the worst in the world in recent years. It is one of the deadliest attacks in sub-Saharan Africa, larger than the Garissa University attack in Kenya in 2015 and the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Somalian Minister of Information Abdirahman Osman said that other nations including Kenya and Ethiopia had already offered to send medical aid.
Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed has declared three days of mourning and joined thousands of people who responded to a desperate plea by hospitals to donate blood.
Exhausted doctors struggled to keep their eyes open, while screams from victims and newly bereaved families echoed through the halls.
The US has condemned the bombing, saying: “Such cowardly attacks reinvigorate the commitment of the United States to assist our Somali and African Union partners to combat the scourge of terrorism.”
The US Africa Command said that US forces had not been asked to provide aid.
The US military has stepped up drone strikes and other efforts this year against al-Shabaab, which is also fighting the Somali military and more than 20,000 African Union forces in the country.
Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia Michael Keating called the attack “revolting,” adding that the UN and African Union were supporting the Somali government’s response with “logistical support, medical supplies and expertise.”
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