MOGADISHU, Somalia -- A truck bomb exploded Saturday morning at a busy security checkpoint in Somalia's capital, killing at least 79 people, including many students, authorities said. It was the worst attack in Mogadishu since a 2017 bombing killed hundreds.
The explosion ripped through rush hour as Somalia returned to work after its weekend. At least 125 people were wounded, Aamin Ambulance service director Abdiqadir Abdulrahman said, and hundreds of Mogadishu residents donated blood in response to desperate appeals.
President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed condemned the attack as a "heinous act of terror" and blamed the al-Shabab extremist group, which is linked to al-Qaida and whose reach has extended to deadly attacks on luxury malls and schools in neighboring Kenya.
In a statement, the Somali president called for unity in the face of "the enemy of human dignity."
"The only objective the terrorists have developed in our country is to kill our innocent people indiscriminately," he said.
An emergency committee would handle the incident and help the victims, the statement said.
Bodies lay on the ground among the blackened skeletons of vehicles. At a hospital, families and friends looked for loved ones among dozens of the dead, gingerly lifting sheets to peer at faces.
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-QdNRfYo98]
Mohamed Yusuf, the director of Medina Hospital in Mogadishu, said he had received 73 bodies. Others were taken to the Digfer and Somali Sudanese hospitals, their directors confirmed. Yusuf said he feared the toll would rise as his teams dealt with dozens of severely injured patients.
Most of those killed were university students returning to class and police officers, said Somalia's police chief, Gen. Abdi Hassan Hijar. He said the vehicle detonated after police at the checkpoint blocked it from proceeding into the city.
Somalis mourned the deaths of so many young people in a country trying to rebuild itself after decades of conflict. Two Turkish brothers were among the dead, Somalia's foreign minister said, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the attack.
The United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, "strongly condemns the terrorist attack," according to a statement released by a U.N. spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
Guterres "stresses that the perpetrators of this horrendous crime must be brought to justice" and "extends his deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of the victims," the statement said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but al-Shabab often carries out such attacks. The extremist group was pushed out of Mogadishu several years ago but continues to target high-profile areas such as checkpoints and hotels in the seaside city.
Al-Shabab is now able to make its own explosives, its "weapon of choice," United Nations experts monitoring sanctions on Somalia said earlier this year. The group had previously relied on military-grade explosives captured during assaults on an African Union peacekeeping force.
Despite that advance in bomb-making, one security expert said the unlikely choice of target Saturday -- a checkpoint at the western entrance to the capital -- reflected al-Shabab's weakening capability to plan and execute attacks at will. Mogadishu recently introduced tougher security measures that Somali officials said make it more difficult to smuggle in explosives.
"It feels like they literally knew that their [truck bomb] may not proceed through the checkpoint into the city undetected, considering the additional obstacles ahead, so bombing the busy checkpoint in a show of strength appeared to be an ideal decision," the Mogadishu-based Ahmed Barre told The Associated Press.
Al-Shabab was blamed for the truck bombing in Mogadishu in October 2017 that killed more than 500 people, but the group never claimed responsibility for the blast that led to widespread public anger. Some analysts said al-Shabab didn't dare claim credit as its strategy of trying to sway public opinion by exposing government weakness had badly backfired.
"This explosion is similar like the one ... in 2017. This one occurred just a few steps away from where I am and it knocked me on the ground from its force. I have never seen such a explosion in my entire life," witness Abdurrahman Yusuf said.
The attack again raises concern about the readiness of Somali forces to take over responsibility for the Horn of Africa country's security in the coming months from the African Union force.
[Gallery not loading above? Click here for more photos » arkansasonline.com/1229blast/]
PULLOUT IN DOUBT
The Kenyan, Ugandan, Ethiopian and other African militaries have contingents in the country under the banner of the African Union. That joint force is scheduled to hand over its operations to the Somali army in May, but al-Shabab's frequent demonstrations of its capabilities despite the multinational effort against it have cast doubt on any future troop withdrawal.
The U.S. military keeps about 500 personnel in Somalia, largely as part of a mission to train Somali special forces. Some U.S. special operations forces accompany Somali counterparts on ground missions. The U.S. military has carried out more than 60 airstrikes this year, mostly targeting al-Shabab, continuing a three-year uptick since President Donald Trump's administration loosened the rules of military engagement in Somalia, allowing for more aggressive use of force.
The Pentagon is weighing whether to sharply reduce or pull out several hundred U.S. troops stationed in West Africa as the first phase of a global reshuffling of U.S. forces. But Defense Department officials said it was less likely that troops would be withdrawn from Somalia because -- as Saturday's attack underscores -- security in the country remains fraught.
The U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu said in a tweet that the United States "continues to stand with Somalis in defeating and degrading terrorism."
ATTACKS, EXTORTION
Al-Shabab operates extensively throughout rural parts of southern and central Somalia and is estimated to have about 10,000 fighters. It uses extortion tactics to collect "taxes" from all manner of businesses across the country, including the main commercial port in Mogadishu. The group's stated aim is to establish its harsh interpretation of Islamic law across Somalia and to expel all foreign troops from the country.
While violent extremist groups like the Islamic State also operate in Somalia, none except al-Shabab has proved capable of repeated large-scale attacks in the capital. Al-Shabab also has declared war on pro-Islamic State cells in Somalia, most of which operate at a distance from Mogadishu in the northeastern Puntland region.
Al-Shabab, which means "The Youth" in Arabic, has wreaked havoc in Somalia since 2006, when the militants began pursuing their goal of establishing an Islamic state. In areas that it controls, the group has banned music, movies, the shaving of beards and the internet.
In recent years, al-Shabab militants have suffered several critical setbacks including territorial losses, the killing of senior commanders and high-level defections. Yet the group has proved resilient, intensifying its lethal campaign against the Somali government and its allies. Given its control over large areas of the country's south, it continues to raise considerable revenue, according to the U.N.
Tricia Bacon, an assistant professor at American University, said in an email that al-Shabab "remains resilient, strong, able to terrorize Mogadishu at will, and, by extension, undermine the legitimacy of the Somali government."
In January, al-Shabab claimed responsibility for an attack on a luxury hotel and office complex in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, that killed more than 20 people. In July, militants killed 26 people in a hotel in the southern port city of Kismayo, Somalia, including a prominent Canadian Somali journalist, Hodan Nalayeh.
The same month, a suicide attack by the group fatally wounded the mayor of Mogadishu, Abdirahman Omar Osman, a British Somali citizen. And on a single day in September, al-Shabab targeted a U.S. base in Somalia and Italian peacekeeping troops.
Murithi Mutiga, the Horn of Africa project director at the International Crisis Group said the attacks showed the group's reach. "This is a year in which they demonstrated a capacity to attack in the capital at a rate that signifies they remain a very potent player," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Abdi Guled and Mohamed Sheikh Nor of The Associated Press; by Hussein Mohamed, Abdi Latif Dahir and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times; by Omar Faruk and Max Bearak of The Washington Post; and by Abdirahman Mohamed and Ralf E. Krueger of dpa.
A Section on 12/29/2019