The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has offered to provide health care to the nearly 300 wounded in Saturday’s attack that killed 104 people.
«Devastating news. We remember the people of Somalia and send the affected families our sincere condolences. WHO stands ready to provide the government with support to treat the injured and provide trauma care to the victims,» Tedros said in a message posted on Twitter.
Hospitals in the capital are overwhelmed by the wounded from Saturday’s double car bombing. Members of the army have started to go to health centers to donate blood for those affected.
The mayor of Mogadishu, Yasin Madale, has released the latest official toll: 104 dead and 269 wounded in Saturday’s double car bombing on a busy thoroughfare in central Mogadishu.
«The hospitals in the capital are saturated! The situation is out of control! There are too many wounded to attend to, too many dead bodies,» the owner of Somalia’s only private ambulance company, Abdul Jadir Adhen, told broadcaster RFI.
Jadir Adhen has warned that hospitals do not have adequate equipment. «Unfortunately I think there will be more deaths among the wounded. There are some very seriously injured,» he said.
He also said that one of his ambulances was affected by the explosions. «The driver and one of the medics in the vehicle were injured. And the ambulance is completely destroyed,» he said.
DISMEMBERING WORK This Sunday morning there were still neighbors digging through the rubble in search of their missing relatives. Others have begun to clean up the site, badly affected by the blast wave that broke many of the windows in the area.
Somali President Hassan Shaykh Mohamud visited the site on Sunday and condemned the «cruel and cowardly» attack while inviting the population to go to hospitals to donate blood. He also called on the international community to send medical reinforcements and medical supplies.
The site of the suicide bombing is Mogadishu’s Zoobe Junction, the same place where on October 14, 2017 more than 587 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a truck bomb explosion.
«It is at the same place and it is the same innocent people» who have been hit, Mohamud has lamented. «It’s not fair. God willing, they will no longer have the capacity to perpetrate a new» attack, like the one in Zobe, he has pointed out.
