Somalia’s president says at least 100 people were killed in Saturday’s two car bombings at a busy junction in the capital and the toll could rise 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.
“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-Qaida-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 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 and especially al-Shabab.
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.
Halima Duwane was searching for her uncle, Abdullahi Jama. “We don’t know whether he is dead or alive but the last time we communicated he was around here,” she said, crying.
Witnesses to the attack were stunned. “I couldn’t count the bodies on the ground due to the (number of) fatalities,” witness Abdirazak Hassan said. He said the first blast hit the perimeter wall of the education ministry, where street vendors and money changers were located.
An Associated Press journalist at the scene said the second blast occurred in front of a busy restaurant during lunchtime. The blasts demolished tuk-tuks and other vehicles in an area of many restaurants and hotels.
The Somali Journalists Syndicate, citing colleagues and police, said one journalist was killed and two others wounded by the second blast while rushing to the scene of the first. The Aamin ambulance service said the second blast destroyed one of its responding vehicles.
It was not immediately clear how vehicles loaded with explosives again made it to the high-profile location in Mogadishu, a city thick with checkpoints and constantly on alert for attacks.
The United States has described al-Shabab as one of al-Qaida’s deadliest organizations and targeted it with scores of airstrikes in recent years. Hundreds of U.S. military personnel have returned to the country after former President Donald Trump withdrew them.
Meanwhile, at least 153 people were killed and dozens more hurt in an apparent crowd surge at packed Halloween festivities in the South Korean capital of Seoul, local officials said.
Three South Korean military personnel were among those killed in an apparent crowd surge at the popular Seoul nightclub district in Itaewon on Saturday night. Four other South Korean military personnel were injured in the incident and are being treated in hospital, a Korean defense ministry official told CNN on Sunday.
Fire officials said most of the victims were women and young people in their 20s and included 19 foreigners from Iran, Uzbekistan, China and Norway. It has also been confirmed that the dead includes one Norwegian and one Sri Lankan national, as well as two Japanese victims.
Four Chinese nationals were among the 151 people killed during Halloween festivities in Seoul, with two others suffering minor injuries, Chinese state news agency Xinhua has reported.
A further 82 people were also injured, 19 of them seriously.
The Yonhap news agency called the disaster, which happened shortly after 10pm local (13:00GMT) when a huge crowd thronged a narrow alley near the Hamilton Hotel, the deadliest such incident in South Korean history.
It happened at the first Halloween celebrations in Seoul in three years, after the country lifted COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing. Tens of thousands of partygoers, wearing masks and Halloween costumes, had reportedly gone to Itaewon for the event.
The cause of the crush was not immediately clear, though some local media said it happened after a large group of people rushed to a bar in the area after hearing an unidentified celebrity visited there.
Witnesses described scrambling to get out of the suffocating crowd in the downhill alley as people ended up piling on top of one another.
“People kept pushing down into a downhill club alley, resulting in other people screaming and falling down like dominos,” one unidentified witness was quoted as saying by the Yonhap news agency.
“I thought I would be crushed to death too as people kept pushing without realizing there were people falling down at the start of the stampede. There were so many people just being pushed around and I got caught in the crowd and I couldn’t get out at first too,” 30-year-old Jeon Ga-eul told the AFP news agency.
“It looks like the casualties were more severe as people attempted to escape to nearby stores but were kicked out back to the street because business hours were over,” the survivor who asked not to be named told Yonhap.
Videos and images from the immediate aftermath showed chaotic scenes of fire officials and citizens treating dozens of people who appeared to be unconscious.
Footage from later on in the evening showed dozens of bodies spread on the pavement covered by bed sheets and emergency workers dressed in orange vests loading even more bodies on stretchers into ambulances.
Seoul Metropolitan Police said they have confirmed the identities of nearly all those killed in an apparent crowd surge at Seoul’s popular nightclub district Itaewon on Saturday. The identities of 150 people killed have been confirmed, police told CNN on Sunday. The death toll from the disaster stands at 153.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government had said they had received 4,024 missing persons reports as of 5 p.m. local time (4 a.m. ET), though some of these reports could relate to the same people.
Police said there is no active search for those reported missing as they believe no one went missing from the scene. They said thousands of missing person reports have been used to help identify those killed in the incident. The three bodies who have yet to be identified are all young women whose nationalities have yet to be verified, they added.
Reacting to the news, South Korean Minister of Interior and Safety, Lee Sang-min said: “We understand that it was not a problem that could have been solved by deploying police or firefighters in advance,” Lee said.
He added that there had been “various disturbances and demonstrations” in other parts of Seoul on Saturday.
“It was expected that many citizens would gather so a considerable number of police and security forces were deployed to Gwanhwanmun (another area of Seoul),” he said.
However, in Itaewon, the crowd had not been unusually large, he said, so only a “normal” level of security forces had been deployed there.
The Asian country’s President Yoon Suk-yeol has declared a period of national mourning following the deadly Halloween crush in Seoul.
“This is truly tragic,” Yoon said in a statement on Sunday, hours after some 151 people were killed in a crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district.
“The government will designate the period from today until the accident is brought under control as a period of national mourning,” he said.
