Somalia’s president says that at least 100 people were killed in two car bombings Saturday at a busy junction in the capital in the country's deadliest attack since a truck bombing at the same spot five years ago killed more than 500. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, at the site of the explosions in Mogadishu, told journalists that nearly 300 other people were wounded, the AP reports. "We ask our international partners and Muslims around the world to send their medical doctors here since we can't send all the victims outside the country for treatment," he said.
The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab extremist group, which often targets the capital and controls large parts of the country, claimed responsibility, saying it targeted the education ministry. It claimed the ministry was an "enemy base" that receives support from non-Muslim countries and "is committed to removing Somali children from the Islamic faith." Al-Shabab usually doesn’t make claims of responsibility when large numbers of civilians are killed, as in the 2017 blast, but it has been angered by a high-profile new offensive by the government that also aims to shut down its financial network. The group said it is committed to fighting until the country is ruled by Islamic law, and it asked civilians to stay away from government areas.
Somalia’s president, elected this year, said the country remained at war with al-Shabab "and we are winning." The extremists, who seek an Islamic state, have responded to the offensive by killing prominent clan leaders in an apparent effort to dissuade grassroots support. The attack has overwhelmed first responders in Somalia, which has one of the world's weakest health systems after decades of conflict. At hospitals and elsewhere, frantic relatives peeked under plastic sheeting and into body bags, looking for loved ones. Witnesses were stunned. "I couldn't count the bodies on the ground," one said.
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