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Kenya: Westgate Mall seige by al-Shabaab terrorists over – President Uhuru Kenyatta
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta addresses the nation during the Westgate Mall crisis on September 22, 2013. PHOTO/Reuters
(Reuters) – Kenya’s president said on Tuesday that his country’s security forces had defeated Islamists from Somalia’s al-Shabaab, had shot 5 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,” 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.
Sixty-one civilians and 6 security personnel had been confirmed killed in the 4 days of bloodshed, 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, 3 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 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.
Kenyatta had rejected the militants’ demands that he pull Kenyan troops out of its northern neighbor. As part of an African peacekeeping force in Somalia, Kenyan forces have pushed the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab on to the defensive over the past 2 years.
