Somalia blast toll rises to 300: Deadliest attack in decades

Somalia Government has blamed the al-Qaida-linked Al-Shabaab extremist group for the attack

 

 

The death toll in the massive twin truck bombings in Somalia's capital has mounted to 300, officials said.

The officials explosion has been called as the one of the deadliest attacks to hit the capital, Mogadishu, since an Islamist insurgency began in 2007, reported the New York Times.
Apart from this, at least 300 have been left wounded, and families scrambled to find missing relatives amid the rubble and in hospitals.

The death toll is expected to rise as the emergency crews are still pulling more bodies from burned cars and demolished buildings after the Saturday blasts.

According to reports, Somalia Government has blamed the al-Qaida-linked Al-Shabaab extremist group for the attack.

However, no group including Al-Shabaab has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.



Speaking to the state-run radio station, Somalia's information minister Abdirahman Omar said the blast was the largest the city had ever seen and "this is how merciless and brutal they are, and we have to unite against them."

President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo condemned the attack and has declared three days of mourning in the country.

"Today's horrific attack proves our enemy would stop nothing to cause our people pain and suffering. Let's unite against terror. We will observe 3 days of mourning for innocent victims, flags will be flown at half-mast.

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ISIS faced major reversals in last 6-9 months: CIA Director

In the last six to nine months, the Islamic State has faced major reversals in the battlefield, a top American spy said, calling the dreaded terror outfit a "failing" organisation.

"There has been significant reversal of their battlefield successes over the last six to nine months. We have seen that they have been pushed out of a number of areas inside of Iraq, as well as in Syria. A number of their leaders have been removed from the battlefield. They do not have the same type of patrol over territory that they had this time last year," the CIA Director John Brennan.

"So, this is all part of the strategic effort that has been under way to try to get the intelligence that is necessary in order to give the coalition the opportunity to take strikes from the air, and also make sure that the Iraqi forces and others and those elements that are fighting on the ground against ISIS are empowered and able to do that," he was quoted as saying by CBS News.

"When I was able to roll across a number of these ungoverned spaces in both Iraq and Syria, that momentum generated quite a bit of attraction. That's why the foreign fighters were flowing there, because they thought this was a winning organisation. It's now a failing organisation. And their narrative has been refuted," he said.

Brennan also said that their claims of great victory have been debunked.

"That's why I think fewer and fewer people now are looking to ISIS as being an organisation they want to read more..