MOGADISHU, Somalia — Thousands of residents of this bullet-scarred city packed into a stadium on Sunday to denounce the Shabab Islamist group for the suicide bombing last week that killed scores of people, many of them students.

It was one of the largest rallies in years in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.

Many participants cried as politicians and others took turns heaping scorn on the Shabab, the militant group that claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s truck bombing.

“Should we abandon our country because of fugitive criminals from abroad and children who have disobeyed their parents?” asked President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed. “The answer is no.”

The rally was held around noon on a steamy day. Many people were soaked in sweat by the time they walked from their neighborhoods to the old soccer stadium, located in central Mogadishu. The program included speeches and traditional Somali dances. Many people seemed deeply moved.

“I came here to denounce the Shabab’s massacre on the students,” said Halima Ulusow, an elderly woman whose face was wet with tears. “We have to oppose all the bad culture imported to our country by the Shabab.”

Somalia has languished without a functioning central government for more than 20 years, and there have been endless rounds of conflict between clan warlords, religious groups and militias-for-hire. The country has fragmented into fiefs, and in southern Somalia, which includes Mogadishu, a weak, transitional government has been battling the Shabab militants for several years. It was the transitional government that organized the rally on Sunday.

A smaller rally, organized by a local youth group, took place in the Wadajir neighborhood of the capital. A local official, Ahmed Hassan Daaci, said that those who killed the students were “cowards,” and said, “Let’s fight against them.”

In August, the Shabab announced that they were withdrawing from Mogadishu and switching to guerrilla tactics, and it seems the unusually large suicide bombing on Tuesday was proof of their resolve to carry on an asymmetrical war, with no hesitation over slaughtering civilians.

The bomber struck a government compound on a busy street where hundreds of students had gathered to check exam results. Many had been hoping for scholarships to Sudan and Turkey. Somalia’s universities, like just about all the country’s public institutions, have been eviscerated by war.

Witnesses reported horrific scenes of burning bodies, twisted in agony, strewn across the streets. Somali officials said that at least 70 people were killed and that the toll could be as high as 100. Floods of wounded people stumbled into this city’s dilapidated hospitals, which were already full of victims of the country’s widening famine.

The Shabab have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and have blocked many Western aid groups from delivering food to starving people in the areas the Shabab control.

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NYTimes

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