NATION/WORLD
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
East Oregonian
Somalia truck bombing kills more
than 300, scores remain missing
By ABDI GULED
Associated Press
MOGADISHU, Somalia
— More than 300 people were
killed in the weekend truck
bombing in Somalia’s capital
and scores remained missing,
authorities said Monday, as
the fragile Horn of Africa
nation reeled from one of the
world’s worst attacks in years.
As funerals continued, the
government said the death
toll was expected to rise.
Nearly 400 people were
injured in the bombing
Saturday that targeted a
crowded street in Mogadishu.
Somalia’s government blamed
the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab,
though the Islamic extremist
group has not claimed respon-
sibility for the attack. A new
statement by the SITE Intel-
ligence Group said al-Shabab
posted claims of responsibility
as recently as Monday for
other attacks on Somali and
African Union forces — but
not for Saturday’s blast.
Still, analysts said there
was little doubt the Islamic
extremist group carried out
the bombing, one of the
deadliest in sub-Saharan
Africa. “No other group in
Somalia has the capacity to
put together a bomb of this
size, in this nature,” said Matt
Bryden, a security consultant
on the Horn of Africa.
Nearly 70 people remained
missing, based on accounts
from relatives, said police
Capt. Mohamed Hussein.
He said many bodies were
burned to ashes in the attack.
As the death toll rose to
302, overwhelmed hospitals
in Mogadishu were strug-
gling to treat badly wounded
AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh
Turkish doctors transport a critically wounded man on a stretcher to a waiting Turk-
ish air ambulance to airlift injured patients for treatment in Turkey, in Mogadishu,
Somalia, Monday.
victims, many burned beyond
recognition.
Exhausted
doctors struggled to keep
their eyes open as the screams
from victims and bereaved
families echoed in the halls.
Africa’s deadliest Islamic
extremist group, al-Shabab
has waged war in Somalia
for more than a decade, often
targeting high-profile areas of
the capital. Earlier this year, it
vowed to step up attacks after
both the Trump administra-
tion and Somalia’s recently
elected
Somali-American
president, Mohamed Abdul-
lahi Mohamed, announced
new military efforts against
the group.
After Saturday’s attack,
Mohamed declared three
days of mourning and joined
thousands of people who
responded to a plea by hospi-
tals to donate blood.
Meanwhile, a Turkish
military plane carrying 35 crit-
ically wounded people arrived
in the Turkish capital, Ankara,
where they were taken to
hospitals
for
treatment.
Countries including Kenya
and Ethiopia have offered to
send medical aid in response
to what Somali’s government
called a “national disaster,”
Information
Minister
Abdirahman Osman said. A
plane carrying a medical team
from Djibouti also arrived
to evacuate the wounded,
according to health ministry
official Mohamed Ahmed.
Mogadishu, a city long
accustomed
to
deadly
bombings by al-Shabab, was
stunned by the force of Satur-
day’s blast. The explosion
shattered hopes of recovery in
an impoverished country left
fragile by decades of conflict,
and it again raised doubts over
the government’s ability to
secure the seaside city of more
than 2 million people.
The
United
States
condemned the bombing,
saying “such cowardly attacks
reinvigorate the commitment
of the United States to assist our
Somali and African Union part-
ners to combat the scourge of
terrorism.” But the U.S. Africa
Command said U.S. forces
had not been asked to provide
aid. Pentagon spokesman Col.
Robert Manning said Monday
the U.S. currently has about
400 troops in Somalia, adding
“we’re not going to speculate”
about sending more.
Houses spared by fires bring joy, sense of loss
SANTA ROSA, Calif.
(AP) — Tom and Catherine
Andrews live on the edge of
devastation.
On one side of their
mid-century style home, the
deadly wildfires that ravaged
parts of Northern California
for more than a week wiped
away the houses of neighbors
they have known as long as
two decades. On the other
side, were those like the
Andrews, who were spared.
On Monday as calm
winds gave an advantage to
firefighters trying to tame the
flames, the couple balanced
their good fortune against
the losses suffered by many
friends.
“It was disbelief and just
feeling like the luckiest guy
on earth,” Tom Andrews
said. “I can’t believe, I mean,
total destruction 50 feet away
and to have our house still
standing here.”
For his wife, a real estate
agent who sold many of the
homes to friends on Wikiup
Drive, there was bitter along
with the sweet.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she
said. “I’m trying not to have
survivor’s guilt, I think they
call it. But we’ve been here
20 years this week. We raised
AP Photo/Eric Risberg
A house stands intact above one that was destroyed
by wildfire near Atlas Peak Road Monday in Napa, Calif.
our kids in this house. So
many of the families on this
hill raised their kids.”
After days of wind gusts
that constantly fanned the
fires, lighter wind offered a
chance for crews to make
greater gains, and thousands
more people were allowed to
go home more than a week
after the blazes that have
killed more than 40 people
began.
Improving weather, the
prospect of some rain later
in the week and tightening
containment of the flames
were tempered by the first
death from the firefighting
effort — a driver who
was killed when his truck
overturned on a winding
mountain road.
Many of those who
returned knew in advance
whether their homes were
standing or reduced to ash.
Satellite images, aerial
photos and news reports
with detailed maps of entire
neighborhoods had given
homeowners in populated
areas a pretty clear idea of the
fire’s path. Some had seen
the flames coming as they
fled. Some families in rural
areas had to wait until they
laid eyes on their property.
The return home was
emotional even for those
whose properties were
spared.
“When we came up
to check on it, we were
amazed it was here,” said
Tom Beckman, who credited
his neighbor’s two sheep
with chomping vegetation
surrounding his home and
keeping the fires at bay.
“All the trivial things we
have to work on — cleaning
up, replacing the stuff in
the fridge and freezer —
that’s nothing compared to
my friends who lost their
homes,” Beckman said.
The smell of smoke
remained thick in the air and
spread to the San Francisco
area, but skies were clearer in
some places.
The truck driver, who
had been delivering water
to the fire lines, crashed
before dawn Monday in
Napa County on a roadway
that climbs from vineyards
into the mountains. No
other details were available
about the accident, which
was under investigation,
said Mike Wilson, a fire
spokesman.
Page 9A
BRIEFLY
North Korea says ‘a nuclear war
may break out any moment’
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — North Korea’s deputy
U.N. ambassador warned Monday that the situation on
the Korean peninsula “has reached the touch-and-go point
and a nuclear war may break out any moment.”
Kim In Ryong told the U.N. General Assembly’s
disarmament committee that North Korea is the only
country in the world that has been subjected to “such an
extreme and direct nuclear threat” from the United States
since the 1970s — and said the country has the right to
possess nuclear weapons in self-defense.
He pointed to large-scale military exercises every year
using “nuclear assets” and said what is more dangerous
is what he called a U.S. plan to stage a “secret operation
aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership.”
This year, Kim said, North Korea completed its
“state nuclear force and thus became the full-fledged
nuclear power which possesses the delivery means of
various ranges, including the atomic bomb, H-bomb and
intercontinental ballistic rockets.”
“The entire U.S. mainland is within our firing range
and if the U.S. dares to invade our sacred territory even an
inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part
of the globe,” he warned.
Trump says predecessors didn’t
honor fallen; response heated
WASHINGTON (AP) — For U.S. presidents, meeting
the families of military personnel killed in war is about
as wrenching as the presidency gets. President Donald
Trump’s suggestion Monday that his predecessors fell
short in that duty brought a visceral reaction from those
who witnessed those grieving encounters.
“He’s a deranged animal,” Alyssa Mastromonaco, a
former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama,
tweeted about Trump. With an expletive, she called
Trump’s statement in the Rose Garden a lie.
Trump said in a news conference he had written letters
to the families of four soldiers killed in an Oct. 4 ambush
in Niger and planned to call them, crediting himself with
taking extra steps in honoring the dead properly. “Most of
them didn’t make calls,” he said of his predecessors. He
said it’s possible that Obama “did sometimes” but “other
presidents did not call.”
The record is plain that presidents reached out to
families of the dead and to the wounded, often with
their presence as well as by letter and phone. The path
to Walter Reed and other military hospitals, as well as to
the Dover, Delaware, Air Force Base where the remains
of fallen soldiers are often brought, is a familiar one to
Obama, George W. Bush and others.
Bush, even at the height of two wars, “wrote all the
families of the fallen,” said Freddy Ford, spokesman for the
ex-president. Ford said Bush also called or met “hundreds, if
not thousands” of family members of the war dead.
Venezuela opposition looks for
answers after election loss
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Voting sites were
shifted to distant neighborhoods with rampant crime.
Ballots featured the faces of opposition candidates who
lost in primaries. The government-stacked National
Electoral Council denied monitoring accreditation to one
of Venezuela’s most important independent observers.
The opposition pointed on Monday to those irregularities
and others that began the moment regional elections were
called to explain a staggering loss in gubernatorial contests
it had expected to win in Sunday’s voting.
“We encountered an absolutely fraudulent system,”
said Carlos Ocariz, the opposition’s candidate in Miranda,
the nation’s second most populous state where the
candidate of the ruling socialist party won.
Opposition leaders vowed to contest the vote and called
for protests, though there was no sign of the mass anti-
government demonstrations that wracked Venezuela this year.
Iraqi forces push into disputed
city as Kurds withdraw
KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) — Two weeks after fighting
together against the Islamic State, Iraqi forces pushed
their Kurdish allies out of the disputed city of Kirkuk on
Monday, seizing oil fields and other facilities amid soaring
tensions over last month’s Kurdish vote for independence.
The move by the Iraqi military and its allied militias so
soon after neutralizing the Islamic State in northern Iraq
hinted at a country that could once again turn on itself
after disposing of a common enemy.
Civilians and federal troops pulled down Kurdish flags
around the city. Kurdish Gov. Najmaddin Karim, who had
stayed at his post despite being dismissed by Baghdad
weeks ago, fled to Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous
Kurdish zone.
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We are
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Joe
proud and
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Cheryl
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your country.
J OSEPH B. D AVIS
Staff Sergeant
Joel Davis
US Marines
Veteran
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Love Evelyn,
Joe and
Cheryl
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