Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta has called for three days of national mourning for the victims of the siege by militant group al-Shabab on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, just as he announced that the siege has ended.
Kenyatta said on Tuesday that 67 people had been killed in the attacks by al-Qaeda linked gunmen, and added five members of the armed group had been killed by gunfire and another 11 suspects are currently being held in custody.
“We have ashamed and defeated our attackers, that part of our task is completed,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
Sixy-one civilians and six members of the security forces had died in the four-day siege which Somali based armed group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for.
Kenyatta said “intelligence reports had suggested that a British woman and two or three American citizens may have been involved in the attack.”
“We cannot confirm the details at present but forensic experts are working to ascertain the nationalities of the terrorists.”
Somalia’s al-Shabab rebels had dismissed speculation in a Twitter post on Tuesday that any woman was involved in an attack by its fighters.
“We have an adequate number of young men who are fully committed and we do not employ our sisters in such military operations,” the group said.
In an interview on Monday, Kenya’s Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed told Al Jazeera that al-Qaeda, not al-Shabab, was behind the attack.
Al-Shabab is “not acting alone”, this assault is “part of an international terrorism campaign”, Mohamed said.
She said that about 20 gunmen and women were behind the attack, and that both the victims and perpetrators came from a variety of nationalities.
In a separate interview with the American PBS network, Mohamed said “two or three” Americans and one Briton were among the attackers.
In a speech on Monday, the Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, described al-Shabab as a threat to the world.
“They are a threat to the continent of Africa, and the world at large,” he said.
Al-Shabab and al-Qaeda announced their alliance in February last year, and Abu Omar, an al-Shabab commander, confirmed in an interview with Al Jazeera that his group is taking orders from al-Qaeda.
The siege began midday on Saturday, when the gunmen marched into the complex, firing grenades and automatic weapons and sending panicked shoppers fleeing.
The dead include six Britons, two French women, two Canadians including a diplomat, a Chinese woman, two Indians, a South Korean, a South African and a Dutch woman, according to their governments.
Also killed was Ghanaian poet and former UN envoy Kofi Awoonor, 78, while his son was injured. [AlJazeera]
No comments:
Post a Comment