Islamist gunmen attack shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya

[Flying Purple People Eater]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...centre-nairobi

Gun attack on Kenyan shopping centre kills at least 25

Islamic militant group al-Shabaab says Kenyan government continued to 'massacre innocent Muslims in Somalia' despite warnings
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Video - police search for gunmen at Nairobi shopping center
theguardian.com, Sunday 22 September 2013 01.20 AEST

At least 25 people have been killed in a suspected terrorist attack in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, after gunmen opened fire and threw grenades in an upmarket shopping centre.

On Saturday evening the Kenyan presidency tweeted that one of the gunmen had been arrested. The country's head of police, David Kimaiyo, said several assailants were also apprehended when police and military entered the mall following the attack.

Witnesses said the men, brandishing AK-47s, told Muslims to leave and shot those they believed were non-Muslims.

"We are treating this as a terrorist attack," said the police chief Benson Kibue, adding that 10 attackers were involved. Police did not say which group was responsible.


A wounded woman is helped to safety after gunmen opened fire in a shopping centre in Nairobi, Kenya. Photograph: Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images

"It is a possibility that it is an attack by terrorists, so we are treating the matter very seriously," Mutea Iringo, the principal secretary in the ministry of interior, told Reuters.

The al-Qaida linked Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabaab has not formally claimed responsibility for the attack, but used it's official Twitter handle, @HSM-Press, to describe the killings as "a very tiny fraction of what Muslims in Somalia experience at the hands of Kenyan invaders".

The group also accused the Kenyan government of continuing to "massacre innocent Muslims in Somalia", a reference to Kenyan troops being sent into Somalia in 2011 in order to fight al-Shabaab.


The Kenyan government, however, turned a deaf ear to our repeated warnings and continued to massacre innocent Muslims in Somalia #Westgate

— HSM Press Office (@HSM_Press) September 21, 2013
The ministry earlier posted warnings to the public on Twitter to avoid the area around the Westgate centre, the most exclusive shopping centre in the city.

Elijah Kamau told the Associated Press the gunmen had made the statement about Muslims as they began their attack.


A Kenyan woman is carried away from the shopping centre. Photograph: Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images

The interior ministry asked local media not to televise the gun battle live because the gunmen were watching the screens in the shopping centre.

Armed police arrived nearly half an hour after the attack began and engaged the gunmen in a shootout. Officers shouted: "Get out, get out", and scores of shoppers fled the building. At least half a dozen were bloodied and helped by first-aiders.

Security guards used shopping trollies to wheel out several wounded children and at least one man.

Rob Vandijk, who works at the Dutch embassy, said he was eating at a restaurant in the shopping centre when attackers lobbed grenades inside the building. He said gunfire then burst out and people screamed as they dropped to the ground.

A former British soldier said: "I personally touched the eyes of four people and they were dead. One of them was a child. It's carnage up there."

Cars were left abandoned outside the centre, which is located in the city's affluent Westlands area and is frequented by expatriates and wealthy Kenyans.

Other witnesses said that they had seen about five armed assailants storm the shopping centre and that the incident appeared to be an attack rather than an armed robbery.

"They don't seem like thugs. This is not a robbery incident," Yukeh Mannasseh told Reuters. "It seems like an attack. The guards who saw them said they were shooting indiscriminately."

Kenya has seen a rise in terrorist attacks and threats in recent years, some of which are believed to be in retaliation for a military crackdown on al-Shabaab. The group vowed in 2011 to carry out a large-scale attack in Nairobi in retaliation for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to fight them.

The attacks often involve gunmen armed with automatic weapons and grenades, and their targets include bars, nightclubs and restaurants in various parts of the country. A suspected al-Shabaab attack in January left five people dead and three injured at a restaurant in the eastern city of Garissa. In August last year one person was killed and six injured in the Eastleigh area of Nairobi on the eve of a visit by Hillary Clinton, the then US secretary of state.

Last month 18 of the 19 US embassies and consulates across the Middle East and Africa were closed after a message between al-Qaida officials about plans for a major terrorist attack was intercepted.

'Innocent muslims'? You mean like the ones you tore from their homes, stole from, enslaved and raped, Al-Shabaab?

This is a bit shocking. I knew islamist sects were present in the Sahel region but I didn't know it happened that often with Kenya.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I guess the death toll has risen...?

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?Arti...tegoryId=12395

[adipocere]

Not to sound crass, but it is interesting how much media coverage this terrorist attack in Kenya on an upscale shopping mall is generating over say...the daily terror bombings in Iraq that have left over 700 dead just in this month. In fact, between 70-92 people were killed on Saturday and the word just kept spinning...

Oh wait: "Foreign Secretary William Hague said there are "undoubtedly British nationals" caught up in the siege" and precious white lives have been threatened. doh

[Devrim]

Oh wait: "Foreign Secretary William Hague said there are "undoubtedly British nationals" caught up in the siege" and precious white lives have been threatened. doh

I would expect that if there are British nationals there. They would be more likely to be black, and of Kenyan descent than white.

Devrim

[adipocere]

I would expect that if there are British nationals there. They would be more likely to be black, and of Kenyan descent than white.

Devrim

Judging by the many photo galleries there appears to be a fairly large number of people who were present who are arguably not of Kenyan descent. I'm not saying that these people Hague was referring to were necessarily white, or that all of the blonde haired blue eyed people fleeing in the photos are British but...

From wikipedia:"Europeans in Kenya primarily consist of descendants of British colonials. Many are of aristocratic descent and still continue to wield significant influence, especially over Kenya's political elite. Britons and other Europeans in Kenya have also traditionally dominated the local business community"

I really think this has something to do with "why we care"

[Bronco]

I would expect that if there are British nationals there. They would be more likely to be black, and of Kenyan descent than white.

Devrim

What makes you think that? The mall was partly targeted because it's popular with expats and foreign employees working in embassies etc.

[synthesis]

A former British soldier said: "I personally touched the eyes of four people and they were dead. One of them was a child. It's carnage up there."

Is it just me or does this guy sound completely fucking insane?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I'm half waiting for some pathetic Maoist Third Worldist to come here and proclaim this to be a noble act of anti imperialist resistance.

Judging by the many photo galleries there appears to be a fairly large number of people who were present who are arguably not of Kenyan descent. I'm not saying that these people Hague was referring to were necessarily white, or that all of the blonde haired blue eyed people fleeing in the photos are British but...

From wikipedia:"Europeans in Kenya primarily consist of descendants of British colonials. Many are of aristocratic descent and still continue to wield significant influence, especially over Kenya's political elite. Britons and other Europeans in Kenya have also traditionally dominated the local business community"

I really think this has something to do with "why we care"

I think we should give warrantless speculation about the ethnic and class composition of the victims a rest until we know more.

Also we should always stand against violence done in the name of/justified by religious reactionary ideology. Yes the victims might be more likely to be foreign or wealthy but they weren't the people repressing the workers and peasants of Somalia.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I think we should give warrantless speculation about the ethnic and class composition of the victims a rest until we know more.

Also we should always stand against violence done in the name of/justified by religious reactionary ideology. Yes the victims might be more likely to be foreign or wealthy but they weren't the people repressing the workers and peasants of Somalia.

All Al-Shabaab really is is just a fascistic islamist sect trying to claw it's way into the horn of Africa for the glory of Saudi imperialism, taking sex slaves wives at gunpoint, whipping muslim moderates and non-muslims, making connections with the oil kingdoms and all that. I can't see how even a MTW crackpot could be that stupid.

Not to sound crass, but it is interesting how much media coverage this terrorist attack in Kenya on an upscale shopping mall is generating over say...the daily terror bombings in Iraq that have left over 700 dead just in this month. In fact, between 70-92 people were killed on Saturday and the word just kept spinning...

Another discussion for another time please. If you want to talk about what you perceive to be bias between two events in the media, please make a thread about it.

[Tim Cornelis]

I found myself very affected by this, more so than a bombing in Pakistan. I don't know exactly why, I certainly didn't know about the high number of foreigners there beforehand, but maybe because the media brought it in such a manner (for instance I was watching RT a few years back and they brought a breaking story of bombings in Russia, and I was affected by this as well, then I told my parents if they knew what happened and they kinda shrugged -- was it the media's format in which they brought the news?)
It's also common that interest in a situation diminishes as it drags on (e.g. Syrian civil war) so Iraq or Pakistan are regarded as 'yet another one of those bombings' whereas in Kenya this is a unique occurrence.
I also found that seeing a news report on Kurdish female fighters in Syria had a tighter grip on me than other violence in Syria because they looked like they could sit next to you on the bus.

It's psychologically more likely to emphatise with people of the same social identity, so Africans walking around in jeans, sneakers, and in a familiar surrounding (shopping mall), or Kurdish females with sneakers and jeans and ponytails wielding AK-47s is more likely to affect you.

The question of selective interest in particular situations is more complex than the straightforward "because whites are more important." (while certainly it factors into the similar or same social identity).

[adipocere]

Somewhat surreal update

Israeli forces enter Nairobi mall, Kenyan president's nephew, fiancee among dead

NAIROBI: Israeli forces have joined Kenyan efforts to end a deadly siege by Somali militants at a Nairobi shopping mall, a security source told AFP Sunday.
"The Israelis have just entered and they are rescuing the hostages and the injured," the source told AFP on condition that he is not named.
At least 59 people have been confirmed killed in the attack by Somali militants on an upmarket shopping mall in Nairobi, a government minister said on Sunday, as Kenyan troops battled gunmen still holding an unknown number of hostages.
Heavy gunfire could be heard as Kenyan security officials said they were attempting to kill or capture the remaining attackers and end the 24-hour-long bloodbath at the Westgate mall.
Among the dead was renowned Ghanaian poet and statesmen Kofi Awoonor. Somalia's al-Qaida-inspired al-Shabaab rebels said the carnage at the part Israeli-owned complex was in retaliation for Kenya's military intervention in Somalia, where African Union troops are battling the Islamists.
Interior minister Joseph Ole Lenku said 59 people were confirmed dead. "A number of attackers are still in the building, and range between 10 to 15 gunmen," he said in a statement. "We believe there are some innocent people in the building, that is why the operation is delicate."

Kenyan president's kin dead

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Sunday a nephew and his fiancee were among the 59 people confirmed killed in an ongoing siege in the shopping mall by Somali militants.
"I feel the pain of every life we have lost, and share your grief at our nation's loss," Kenyatta said, calling his killed relatives "young, lovely people I personally knew and loved."
"They shall not get away with their despicable and beastly acts," Kenyatta said in an emotional speech to the nation.
"We will punish the masterminds swiftly and indeed very painfully." More than 1,000 people have been rescued from the mall, but between 10 to 15 attackers — reportedly including both men and women — remain in the building "as well as many unarmed, badly shaken, innocent civilians", Kenyatta added.
The Westgate mall is popular with wealthy Kenyans and expatriates, and was packed with around 1,000 shoppers when the gunmen marched in at midday Saturday, tossed grenades and sprayed automatic gunfire at terrified people.
Security agencies have long feared that the shopping centre could be targeted by al-Qaida-linked groups.
The attack was the worst in Nairobi since an al-Qaida bombing at the US embassy killed more than 200 people in 1998.
After a day and night of sometimes ferocious gun battles, security sources said police and soldiers had finally "pinned down" the gunmen. The Kenyan Red Cross appealed for blood donations and authorities urged residents to steer clear of the area.
"We are still battling with the attackers and our forces have managed to maroon the attackers on one of the floors," said Kenyan military spokesman Colonel Cyrus Oguna.
"We still do not know the number of hostages nor the attackers but we hope to bring this to an end today."
One teenage survivor recounted to AFP how he played dead to avoid being killed.
"I heard screams and gunshots all over the place. I got scared. I tried to run down the stairs and saw someone running towards the top, I ran back and hid behind one of the cars," 18-year-old Umar Ahmed said.
In the hours after the attack began, shocked people of all ages and races could be seen running from the mall, some clutching babies, while others crawled along walls to avoid stray bullets.
"They spoke something that seemed like Arabic or Somali," said a man who escaped the mall and gave his name only as Jay. "I saw people being executed after being asked to say something."
Kenyan police, troops and special forces then moved in and went shop-to-shop inside the shopping centre. Foreign security officials — from Israel, the United States and Britain — were also seen at the complex.
An AFPTV reporter said she saw at least 20 people rescued from a toy shop, some of them children taken away on stretchers.
Kenneth Kerich, who was shopping when the attack happened, described scenes of utter panic.
"I suddenly heard gunshots and saw everyone running around so we lied down. I saw two people who were lying down and bleeding, I think they were hit by bullets," he said.
"The gunmen tried to fire at my head but missed. I saw at least 50 people shot," mall employee Sudjar Singh told AFP.
Ghanaian poet Awoonor, 78, who was once his country's representative to the United Nations, was killed while shopping with his son, who was injured in the attack, Ghanaian officials said.
A spokesman for Shabaab said the attack was retaliation for Kenya's nearly two-year-old military presence in war-torn Somalia in support of the internationally backed Mogadishu government.
"We have warned Kenya of that attack but it ignored (us), still forcefully holding our lands ... while killing our innocent civilians," Shabaab spokesman Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage said in a statement.
"If you want Kenya in peace, it will not happen as long as your boys are in our lands."
The group also issued a string of statements via Twitter, one of them claiming that Muslims in the centre had been "escorted out by the Mujahideen before beginning the attack".
Police at the scene said a suspect wounded in the firefight had been detained and taken to hospital under armed guard, and later died of his injuries.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was "appalled by the brutal attack against innocent citizens" and sent her "sincere condolences to those who have lost family, friends and loved ones".
Paris confirmed that two French citizens were among those killed in what it condemned as a "cowardly" attack. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper said two Canadians, one of them a diplomat, were among the dead, while official Chinese news agency Xinhua said one Chinese woman was killed and her child wounded.
Two Indians and a South Korean were also among the dead. The United States said its citizens were reportedly among those injured by the "despicable" act while British Foreign Secretary William Hague said there were "undoubtedly British nationals caught up in this so we should be ready for that".
The UN security council condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms"

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

As if things weren't bad enough for Somalis living in Kenya as it was, this is some great PR

[Bronco]

As if things weren't bad enough for Somalis living in Kenya as it was, this is some great PR

Great PR for who exactly?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

No one? Or al shabaab I guess, in case you forgot they were still around.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Good pr for Kenyans who hate Somalis, a population which isn't negligible from what I've read

[Red Commissar]

Great PR for who exactly?

He was being sarcastic, the Somali refugee population inside Kenya is already very marginalized and this will likely further it. There was a lot of scapegoating along these lines after the US embassy bombing in the 90s towards the broader Muslim community (you're making Kenya look bad to the world!). Kenya's economy as it is, it draws Somalis trying to leave the chaos in Somalia, but their increasing size has opened up the usual hate from nativist-type politics.

Kenya already has some ethnic and religious divides (while the last election was free of violence, the one before that was pretty bad) so events like this don't help to that, lets demagogues take advantage of it and further sectarianism.

[adipocere]

Predictably, vomit inducing op-eds begin to be churned out.
Note that in this display of breathtaking vulgarity, the author is using the opportunity to promote her fascist fantasy novel.

Nairobi mall attack strikes against all of us: Column
Louise Branson 4:45 p.m. EDT September 22, 2013
As on 9/11, terrorists are waging a war on our modern, democratic way of life. Today, we are all Kenyans.

Story Highlights

• The same theme and grievances as 9/11 are woven through this horror.
• I grew up in the region in the dying days of the colonial empire.
• An imaginative future al-Shabaab attack on the U.S. is even the premise of a novel I am finishing.

It's the post-9/11 nightmare that Americans have been half expecting: al-Qaeda gunmen attack a shopping mall, take hostages, leave behind carnage and a sickening repeat question: "Why us?"
Over the weekend, that scenario happened. Not in America, but in the country where President Obama's father was born: Kenya. A glittering, up-market mall in the capital, Nairobi, has looked like a violent, blood-spattered Hollywood movie: heavily armed, well-trained gunmen dressed in black on a rampage; hostages; hundreds dead and injured; an utterly overwhelmed police force.
The same theme and grievances as 9/11 are woven through this horror. The gunmen are not from al-Qaeda; they are from a group known as al-Shabaab in Somalia, the country that neighbors Kenya. But the groups are affiliated. They could almost be clones. Al-Shabaab for years has ruled and terrorized much of Somalia, meting out such sharia law punishment as beheadings and stoning women to death for adultery, even if the women had been raped.
Kenyan forces have spearheaded outside efforts to restore some order in Somalia and drive al-Shabaab out. They've been fairly successful. That is why Kenya is now under the al-Shabaab attack. This is just the latest among horrors that have included torching Christian churches and killing tourists.
President Obama's most effective and dramatic move would be to go to Nairobi. He is half-Kenyan. He has the status of a near-God there. His influence is incalculable. He could say what needs to be said to Kenyans, to al-Shabaab, to Americans and to the world: Kenyans need to stay strong and to keep forces in Somalia, not withdraw them as the attackers want; such attacks are painful and cowardly; the only way to fight them is by standing firm.
Somalia next Afghanistan?
Just as important: The fight is not just a Kenyan, or African, fight. Somalia could be the new Afghanistan. A lawless, fundamentalist Somalia could incubate a Somali Osama bin Laden and new attacks on the USA, just as Afghanistan protected and nurtured bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
For a decade and a half, the warning signs have been growing. Al-Qaeda blew up the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998. The truck bomb killed more than 200, and there was a simultaneous attack on the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Tanzania. An Israeli hotel on the tourist beaches of the Indian Ocean was attacked more than a decade ago.
I grew up in the region in the dying days of the colonial empire and already sensed back then the religious and tribal forces that could be unleashed. An imaginative future al-Shabaab attack on the U.S. is even the premise of a novel I am finishing.
There is a catch to an Obama Kenya trip. A Catch-22.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta is accused of war crimes for allegedly inciting violence after elections in 2007, in which more than 1,000 people died. His trial at the International Criminal Court is set for November. An Obama trip could be seen as supporting Kenyatta, undermining the charges.
Benefits of Obama visit
The benefit, though, would outweigh this risk. Obama could focus attention on the charges, too, and underscore how volatile and difficult the whole region is, and how much the U.S. needs to focus on it. Kenya has long been considered an oasis of stability on a violent continent. Kenyatta is the son of the revered first post-colonial president, Jomo Kenyatta.
The Nairobi shopping mall attack is heartbreaking. The stories could so easily be American stories. A popular radio host killed where she had earlier posted photos onto her Instagram account. A respected, elderly poet and professor from Ghana was also gunned down. As the days go by, there will be more victims identified, more grief at lives ended too violently, too soon, as they were on 9/11.
The message of the attackers could easily be imagined in an attack, say, on the Mall of the America. The attackers even called for Muslims to run away. As on 9/11, they are attacking a modern, democratic way of life. After 9/11, the French newspaper Le Monde famously carried a headline: We Are All Americans.
After the Nairobi attack, the message should be "We Are All Kenyans." Not just in our sympathy. But also in going all out to prevent another terrorist attack.
Leaving Somalia to al-Shabab is not an option.

[khad]

List of attackers provided by Al-Shabab's twitter before the account was locked:

Sayid N. from Kismayu, Somalia.

Zaki Jama C., from Hargeisa, Somalia

Saad D., from Damascus, Syria

Mohamed B., from Aleppo, Syria

Qasim Said M., Garissa, Kenya

Ismail G., from Helsinki, Finland

Ahmed Nasir S., from London, UK

Mustafa N., from Kansas City, US

Abdishakur Sheikh H., from Maine, US

Abdifatah Osman K., from Minneapolis, US

Ahmad Mohamed I., from Saint Paul, US

Abdikarem Ali M., from Illinois, US

Shafie D., from Tucson, US

Abdirazak M., from Ontario (Canada)

Eliko M., from Dagestan, Russia

Mohammed A., from Svalov, Sweden

Moulid A., from Sweden

http://ojihad.wordpress.com/2013/09/...cked-westgate/

[Os Cangaceiros]

Mustafa N., from Kansas City, US

Abdishakur Sheikh H., from Maine, US

Abdifatah Osman K., from Minneapolis, US

Ahmad Mohamed I., from Saint Paul, US

Abdikarem Ali M., from Illinois, US

Shafie D., from Tucson, US

awwwwwk-waaaaaard...

[Os Cangaceiros]

Death toll is over 60 now. One of the witnesses who was there described a really surreal scene with mall muzak playing over speakers, interspersed periodically with gunfire and screaming.