Nairobi mall attackers defeated, Kenyan president says

Uhuru Kenyatta says 61 civilians and six soldiers killed in four-day siege, with 11 militants captured and five shot dead.

The Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta makes a televised address on Tuesday to announce the defeat of militants who stormed a mall in Nairobi four days earlier. Kenya Presidency / AP Photo

NAIROBI // Kenya’s president said on Tuesday that his forces had “defeated” Islamists from Somalia’s Al Shabab, had shot five of them dead and detained 11 others suspected of killing 67 people after storming a Nairobi shopping mall.

“We have ashamed and defeated our attackers,” President Uhuru Kenyatta said, adding that bodies were still trapped under rubble following the collapse of part of the building late in the operation. A fire began on Monday which officials said was started by the gunmen.

It remained unclear after Mr Kenyatta addressed the nation on television whether the four-day security operation at the upmarket Westgate centre was completely over, or whether any militants were still at large or hostages unaccounted for.

Sixty-one civilians and six security personnel had been confirmed killed, Mr Kenyatta said. Five of the attackers were shot dead and 11 suspects were in custody: “Kenya has stared down evil and triumphed,” he said.

The president added that he could not confirm intelligence reports that a British woman and two or three Americans might be involved. Forensic scientists were involved in trying to identify the nationalities of the “terrorists”, he said.

“Towards the tail end of the operation, three floors of the Westgate mall collapsed and there are several bodies trapped in the rubble including the terrorists,” he added. The death toll had previously been put by officials at 62.

“These cowards will meet justice as will their accomplices and patrons, wherever they are,” said the president, who lost a nephew in the weekend bloodbath.

He thanked other leaders for support and used his address to both praise the response of the Kenyan people and call for national unity, six months after his election was marked by ethnic tensions.

Mr Kenyatta had rejected the militants’ demands that he pull Kenyan troops out of its northern neighbour. As part of an African peacekeeping force in Somalia, Kenyan forces have pushed Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabab on to the defensive over the past two years.

Kenyan officials had announced the imminent end of the siege for the past three days – something Al Shabaab mocked in commentaries and in postings on social media.

Some hours before Mr Kenyatta spoke, the group said its militants were still holding out with hostages and that there were “countless dead bodies” still inside the complex.

“There are countless number of dead bodies still scattered inside the mall, and the Mujahideen are still holding their ground #Westgate,” the group said on its Twitter feed.

“The hostages who were being held by the Mujahideen inside #Westgate are still alive, looking quite disconcerted but, nevertheless, alive.”

It described its fighters as “unruffled and strolling around the mall in such sangfroid manner”.

In an audio statement posted via Twitter, Al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage called the militants’ action a “deadly thrust” by “loyal soldiers seeking to rewrite history”. If Kenya failed to pull troops out of Somalia and free Al Shabaab prisoners it should “expect black days”.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Kenyan military said its forces were carrying out “mop up operations” in the building.

The Interior Ministry earlier said security forces were in control of the mall and that all the hostages had been released.

Images from closed-circuit television inside the mall during the attack, published in a Kenyan newspaper on Tuesday, showed two militants, casually dressed and wearing ammunition belts. One held an assault rifle. Al Shabab confirmed that the two men were part of the group that attacked Westgate.

The Kenyan foreign minister Amina Mohamed told PBS television in the United States that “two or three Americans” and a British woman were among the militants.

She said the Americans were “young men, about between maybe 18 and 19” years old. She said they were of Somali or Arab origin and had lived in “in Minnesota and one other place”.

Al Shabab, which said it had been in communication with its members in the mall, dismissed the minister’s comments.

“Those who describe the attackers as Americans and British are people who do not know what is going on in Westgate building,” Al Shabaab’s media office said.

A British security source said it was possible that Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of Germaine Lindsay, one of the suicide bombers who killed more than 50 people on London’s transport system in 2005, was involved in the Nairobi siege.

When asked about reports that Ms Lewthwaite, dubbed the “white widow” by the British media, was directly involved in the attack in Kenya, the source said: “It is a possibility. But nothing definitive or conclusive yet.”

Ms Lewthwaite is thought to have left Britain several years ago and is wanted in connection with an alleged plot to attack hotels and restaurants in Kenya.

The attack on the mall is the worst such incident in Kenya since Al Qaeda killed more than 200 people when it bombed the US Embassy in Nairobi in 1998.

* Reuters