Al Shabab attack on Nairobi mall kills at least 30 people

Al Qaeda-linked militants say the attack is retribution for Kenya's military intervention in Somalia.

A police officer holds a gun to provide cover for people running out of the Westgate shopping mall. Noor Khamis / Reuters

NAIROBI // Al Shabab militants carried out a gun and grenade attack at an upscale mall on Saturday that killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens.

Gunmen remained inside hours after the attack, although firing subsided. Police said the attackers were “pinned down” as officers went from shop to shop to secure the building.

The Westgate mall in Nairobi had been hosting a children’s day event and was packed with about 1,000 shoppers when the attack began at midday. The gang of about 10 people, including at least one woman, carried AK-47s and wore vests with hand grenades.

Somalia’s Islamist extremist rebels, Al Shabab, said they carried out the attack.

“The gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave. They were safe, and non-Muslims would be targeted,” said witness Elijah Kamau.

Another witness, Manish Turohit, 18, said: "They just came in and threw a grenade. We were running and they opened fire. They were shouting and firing."

Mr Turohit hid in a parking garage for two hours then walked out of the mall in a line of 15 people who all held their hands in the air.

Another witness, Jay Patel, who sought cover on an upper floor in the mall when shooting began, looked out of a window on to the upper parking deck of the mall and saw the gunmen with a group of people. As the attackers were talking, some of the people stood up and left and the others were shot.

The attack is thought to have began at the outdoor seating area of Artcaffe at the front of the mall.

Patrick Kuria, an employee at Artcaffe, said: “We started by hearing gunshots downstairs and outside. Later we heard them come inside. We took cover. Then we saw two gunmen wearing black turbans. I saw them shoot.”

Rob Vandijk, who works at the Dutch embassy, was at a restaurant in the mall when attackers lobbed grenades inside.

He said gunfire burst out and people screamed as they dropped to the ground.

As a standoff with police began, ambulances continued to stream in and out of the mall area, ferrying the wounded who gradually emerged from hiding inside the mall, which is frequented by expatriates and rich Kenyans in Nairobi’s affluent Westlands neighbourhood.

Mall guards used shopping trolleys to wheel out wounded children, as adults emerged crying or clutching their children.

An off-duty police officer, Frank Mugungu, said he saw four male attackers and one female, and that he could clearly identify one of the gunmen as a Somali, though he could not identify the rest.

The mall, with shops such as Nike, Adidas and Bose, has Israeli ownership, and security experts have in the past identified it as a possible terror target.

A hospital was overwhelmed with the number of wounded being brought in hours after the attack, and had to divert them to a second facility.

The United Nations secretary general’s office said Ban Ki-moon had spoken to the president Uhuru Kenyatta and expressed his concern. The UK foreign office urged British nationals to avoid the area, and said it was “urgently looking into” the incident.

Kenya suffered a spate of grenade attacks that killed more than 60 people from October 2011 to March after Al Shabab threatened attacks. Police attributed the attacks to sympathisers of Al Shabab in Kenya.

Authorities said they had thwarted other large-scale attacks targeting public spaces. Kenyan police said in September 2012 they disrupted a major terrorist attack in its final stages of planning, and arrested two people with explosive devices and a cache of weapons and ammunition.

Antiterror police chief Boniface Mwaniki said vests found were similar to those used in attacks that killed 76 people in Uganda who gathered to watch the football World Cup finals in July 2010. Al Shabab claimed responsibility for those bombings, and said the attack was in retaliation for Uganda’s participation in the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

In January 2012, Kenya said it had thwarted attempted attacks by Al Shabab over Christmas and the New Year.

* The Associated Press with additional reporting by Agence France-Presse