“There will be responsibilities within the government, and no one in the government will escape responsibility,” Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Berri said on Sunday evening, following visiting the wounded in the attack in a hospital in Mogadishu. Anyone who neglected the responsibility given to him will be held accountable.”
“There is only one choice here: Either we allow the youth (the movement) – the children of Hell – to live, or we live. We cannot live together.”
“If their intention is to undermine the resolve of the Somali people who decided to fight them, that will never happen, and the fight once morest them has already begun in several locations,” he said.
He called “the Somali people to unite to fight the enemy and liberation so that what happened will never be repeated.”
138 dead and wounded
The movement linked to the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda launched an attack with weapons and bombs on Friday evening on the “Al-Hayat” Hotel in the capital, Mogadishu. The operation ended Saturday night, Sunday, following the security forces intervened.
On Sunday, Health Minister Ali Haji Aden said 21 people had been killed and 117 wounded. According to police officer Abdi Hassan Muhammad Hajjar, the security forces rescued “106 people, including women and children.”
This is the largest attack on Mogadishu since the election of the new Somali President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, in May, and the commencement of the work of the federal government formed in early August.
Thirty hours of the attack
Al-Shabaab operatives were expelled from major cities in Somalia, including the capital, Mogadishu, in 2011, but they remain scattered in vast rural areas and pose a threat to the authorities.
The attack was condemned by the former leader of the movement, Mukhtar Robow, nicknamed Abu Mansour, who was appointed Minister of Religious Affairs in the Somali government. He also called on the fighters to defect from it.
He said, “I call them to repentance. A person can retract his mistakes as long as he is alive.”
“Those who send you to do this, I know many of them, send their children to study at Mogadishu University and they will not send them to do this work. Therefore, I invite you to be careful, repent, leave them and return to your community, as the opportunity is still before you.” “Society should know that it is in its interest to unite to fight them,” he added.
UN aid
On the other hand, Martin Griffiths, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, has allocated $10 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to increase emergency aid in Somalia, following the worst drought in 40 years.
According to the United Nations, catastrophic levels of food insecurity were declared for the first time since 2017, with 213,000 people in famine-like conditions and half the population (7.8 million people) suffering from acute food insecurity.
Griffiths warned that malnourished children have their lives at risk and this new funding will help humanitarian agencies get supplies and staff as soon as possible to help humanity avert another disaster in Somalia. 1.5 million children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition. Among them, 386,400 people will need emergency nutritional treatment to survive.
