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Al-Shabaab says Kenyan government buried 137 hostages in mall 'demolition' Westgate mall attack: international teams join investigation
(about 3 hours later)
The terrorist group behind the takeover of a Nairobi mall claimed on Wednesday that a Kenyan government assault team carried out "a demolition" of the building, burying 137 hostages in rubble. A government spokesman denied the claim and said Kenyan forces were clearing all rooms, firing as they moved and encountering no one. US, British and Israeli agencies are helping Kenya investigate an attack by Islamist militants on a Nairobi shopping mall that killed at least 72 people and destroyed part of the complex.
In a series of tweets from a Twitter account which is believed to be genuine, al-Shabaab also said that "having failed to defeat the mujahideen inside the mall, the Kenyan govt disseminated chemical gases to end the siege". After a four-day siege, President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Tuesday troops had defeated the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group that targeted the shopping centre popular with prosperous Kenyans and foreigners. He declared three days of mourning.
A Kenyan government spokesman, Manoah Esipisu, told the Associated Press that no chemical weapons were used – including tear gas – and that the collapse of floors in the mall was caused by a fire set by the terrorists. He said the official civilian death toll remains 61. The attack has highlighted the reach of the Somali al-Shabaab and the capabilities of its crack unit believed to be behind the bloodshed in Westgate mall, confirming international fears that as long as Somalia remains in turmoil it will be a recruiting and training ground for militant Islam.
"Al-Shabab is known for wild allegations and there is absolutely no truth to what they're saying," Esipisu said. But officials said the death count will likely rise. Estimates vary between only a few bodies to dozens of bodies possibly being still inside the mall. The militants stormed the mall, known for its Western shops selling iPads and Nike shoes, in a hail of gunfire and grenades at lunchtime Saturday. The attack ended on Tuesday when Kenyan troops detonated explosives to get through locked doors inside the mall as they searched for militants or booby traps.
Photos and video of the damage showed the mall's top-level parking lot collapsed in the middle of the building. That brought the second level down on to the ground floor, on top of at least eight civilians and one or more attackers, said Esipisu. "We have moved to the next phase," interior minister Joseph ole Lenku told a news conference.
The United States Ambassador to Kenya says US experts are helping Kenyan forces search for bodies and evidence in the mall that Islamic terrorists held for four days. Robert F Godec said in a statement on Wednesday that the US is providing technical support and equipment to Kenyan security forces and medical responders. Godec said that at the request of the Kenyan government, the US is assisting the investigation to bring the attack's organizers and perpetrators to justice. He said that alongside US, British and Israeli agencies, Kenya was also receiving help from Germany, Canada and the police agency Interpol in the investigation.
Kenyan forensic experts – aided by FBI agents and Israeli specialists – are working to reconstruct what happened in the attack, said Esipisu, speaking at the mall on Wednesday. British forensic experts are also expected. He said he did not expect the death toll of 61 civilians, six members of the security forces and five attackers to rise significantly, and that the only bodies still likely to be found were those of slain assailants.
In another development, a British man was arrested in Kenya following the terrorist attack, Britain's Foreign Office said. British officials are ready to provide assistance to the man, the agency said in a statement Wednesday. Officials would not provide his name or details. He is believed to be in his 30s. Britain's Daily Mail newspaper said he was arrested on Monday as he tried to board a flight from Nairobi to Turkey with a bruised face and while acting suspiciously. Three floors collapsed after the blasts and a separate fire weakened the structure of the vaulted, marble-tiled building. Officials said the blaze arose from militants lighting mattresses as a decoy.
Kenyan officials have said that 11 suspects have been arrested in connection with the attack, including at least seven at the airport. They are being questioned, said a government spokesman. Kenya has said 10 to 15 attackers launched the raid. Ole Lenku said the investigation would seek to ascertain if there were any females among the assailants, as some witness accounts suggest, and would also see if the groups had rented a store in the mall prior the attack as part of their preparation.
The International Criminal Court in the Hague has said it is prepared to work with Kenya to bring the attackers to justice. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement that while Kenya has primary jurisdiction over the killing of civilians in the Westgate Mall, the atrocity could also fall under the court's jurisdiction. Al-Shabaab said it launched the assault to demand Kenya withdraw its troops fighting with African peacekeepers in Somalia. It said hostages were killed when Kenyan troops used gas to clear the mall. Officials dismissed this as "propaganda".
The Westgate Mall, which was popular with foreign residents of the capital as well as tourists and wealthy Kenyans, is now being treated as a crime scene and the Kenyan military has handed over control of the building to the police. President Uhuru Kenyatta told the nation on Tuesday night that the terrorists had been defeated; he declared three days of national mourning, beginning on Wednesday. Kenyatta has said Kenyan forces would not leave Somalia. "We have ashamed and defeated our attackers," he said in his televised address on Tuesday.
Early on Wednesday morning, occasional gunshots could still be heard from the mall. Esipisu said they were from Kenyan forces going room to room in the large Westgate Mall, firing protectively before entering unknown territory. US president Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan, said he believed the country – scene of one of al Qaeda's first big attacks, in 1998, when a bomb devastated the US embassy in Nairobi – would continue to be a regional pillar of stability.
"During sanitization once you take control of the place if you go to a room where you haven't visited before you shoot first to make sure you aren't walking into an ambush," Kenyatta said. "But there hasn't been any gunfire from the terrorists for more than 36 hours." "The investigators will be looking to see what information they can extract to identify the terrorists and their nationalities, including DNA tests," a senior official from the National Disaster Operation Centre told Reuters, after officials described the attack as a "multinational" operation.
The attack killed at least 61 civilians, six security officers and five extremists, the president said. Another 175 people were injured, including more than 60 who remain hospitalized. Fears persisted that some of the attackers could still be alive and loose inside the rubble of the mall, a vast complex that had shops for retailers like Bose, Nike and Adidas, as well as banks, restaurants and a casino. Eleven people suspected of involvement with the well-planned assault are in custody, but Kenyan officials have not said how many, if any, were gunmen taken alive and how many may have been people arrested elsewhere.
A high-ranking security official involved in the investigations said it would take time to search the whole mall before declaring that the terrorist threat had been crushed. That official insisted on anonymity in order to discuss information not publicly disclosed. It was unclear whether intelligence reports of American or British gunmen would be confirmed. Al-Shabaab denied that any women took part, after British sources said the fugitive widow of one of the 2005 London suicide bombers might have some role.
Al-Shabaab, whose name means "the Youth" in Arabic, first began threatening Kenya with a major terror attack in late 2011, after Kenya sent troops into Somalia following a spate of kidnappings of westerners inside Kenya. The al-Shabaab extremists stormed the mall on Saturday, throwing grenades and firing on civilians. In Washington, US attorney general Eric Holder said on Wednesday there had been no verification that Americans were involved in the mall attack.
The group used Twitter to say that Somalis have been suffering at the hands of Kenyan military operations in Kenya, and the mall attack was revenge. "You could have avoided all this and lived your lives with relative safety," the group tweeted on Tuesday. "Remove your forces from our country and peace will come." A thin trail of smoke still drifted up on Wednesday above the Israeli-built shopping complex, a symbol of Africa's economic rise that has drawn in foreign investors.
The militants specifically targeted non-Muslims and at least 18 foreigners were among the dead, including six Britons as well as citizens from France, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, India, Ghana, South Africa and China. Five Americans were wounded. Faster growth has also created wider wealth gaps, adding to grievances tapped by several violent Islamist groups from Mali to Algeria and Nigeria to Kenya. All have espoused an anti-Western, anti-Christian creed.
The mall attack was the deadliest terrorist attack in Kenya since the 1998 al-Qaida truck bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, which killed more than 200 people. "If Westgate was Kenya's symbol of prosperity, it is now a symbol of their vulnerability, a symbol of defeat and overall Kenyan impotence," al-Shabaab said on its Twitter account, one of several taunts it sent after the attack.
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/>Al-Shabaab, which derided Kenya as it was battling militants inside the mall, said action by Kenyan troops using gas were responsible for the "lives of the 137 hostages who were being held by the mujahideen [fighters]." The Kenyan government puts the casualty toll at 72, although this is likely to rise.
Ole Lenku said he could not confirm intelligence reports of British and American militants. One cabinet minister had earlier denied speculation that women were among the guerrillas, but said some had been dressed as women, a possible ploy to get weapons past the mall's unarmed private security guards.
A British security source said it was possible Samantha Lewthwaite, widow of one of the London suicide bombers of 7 July 2005, was involved in the Nairobi siege. "It is a possibility. But nothing definitive or conclusive yet," the source said.
Lewthwaite is wanted in connection with an alleged plot to attack expensive hotels and restaurants in Kenya.
Kenyatta thanked other leaders, including Obama, for their support and used his address to praise the response of the Kenyan people and call for national unity, six months after his election was marked by ethnic tensions.
• An earlier version of this article, by the Associated Press, gave more weight to claims by al-Shabab of the responsibility of the Kenyan government for a high death toll. The article was updated to give greater context.
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