News
Kenya: Westgate Mall seige by al-Shabaab terrorists over – President Uhuru Kenyatta
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-Shabaab confirmed that the two men were part of the group that attacked the Westgate Mall.
Kenyan Foreign Secretary 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-Shabaab, which said it had been in communication with its members in the mall, dismissed the Secretary’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 told reporters.
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 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.”
