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| Relatives of Johnny Mutinda Musango, 48, weep after identifying his body at the city morgue in Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday Sept. 24 2013. Musango was one of the victims of the Westgate Mall hostage siege. Kenyan security forces were still combing the Mall on the fourth day of the siege by al-Qaida-linked terrorists. |
NAIROBI, Kenya
(AP) -- Kenyan authorities prepared for the gruesome task of
recovering dozens more victims than initially feared after the country's
president declared an end Tuesday to the four-day siege of a Nairobi
mall by al-Qaida-linked terrorists. Officials said the death count could
jump by another 60 or more.
"We have ashamed
and defeated our attackers," President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a
televised address to the nation that was delayed for hours as gunbattles
persisted at the upscale Westgate mall. "Kenya has stared down evil and
triumphed."
Despite Kenyatta's declaration,
troops remained deployed at the vast complex, and security officials
told The Associated Press attackers with weapons or booby traps might
still be inside. A plan to remove bodies was aborted because of
continued skirmishes inside the mall, where three floors had collapsed.
Describing
the victims as "innocent, harmless civilians" of "various
nationalities, races, ethnic, cultural, religious and other walks of
life," a solemn-looking Kenyatta reported the known death toll: at least
61 civilians, along with six security forces and five al-Shabab
militants.
About 175 people were injured,
including 62 who remain hospitalized, he said, acknowledging that
"several" bodies remained trapped in the rubble, including those of
terrorists.
However, another government
official said a far higher toll was feared and morgue workers were
preparing to receive up to 60 more bodies. A Western embassy official
said the number of additional dead could go as high as 100. Both
officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss
information not publicly disclosed.
"They're
just seeing dead bodies. They've found no survivors, no live hostages,"
said a Nairobi resident whose brother was taking part in the military
sweep inside the mall. He spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity
because his brother was not authorized to publicly release the
information.
Kenyatta said 11 suspects had
been arrested; authorities previously announced that seven had been
taken into custody at the airport and three elsewhere.
"These cowards will meet justice as will their accomplices and patrons, wherever they are," an emotional Kenyatta declared.
"We
confronted this evil without flinching, contained our deep grief and
pain, and conquered it," he said. "As a nation, our head is bloodied,
but unbowed."
Kenyatta declared three days of national mourning starting Wednesday.
Kenyatta
said forensic experts would examine the corpses of the assailants to
determine their identities, softening earlier assertions by Kenya's
foreign minister that Americans and a Briton were involved in the siege.
"Intelligence
reports had suggested that a British woman and two or three American
citizens may have been involved in the attack," the president said. "We
cannot confirm the details at present but forensic experts are working
to ascertain the nationalities of the terrorists."
Kenyan
officials as early as Sunday evening began declaring near-victory over
what they said were 10 to 15 attackers, some who wore black turbans and
many with grenades strapped to their vests. But battles inside the
shopping complex continued, straining the credibility of victory
declarations.
Booming explosions on Monday
collapsed a second-story parking garage down into a department store -
blasts that lit cars on fire and sent dark plumes of smoke skyward for
nearly two hours. Explosions continued throughout Tuesday, and the
chatter of gunfire from inside the building could be heard. Fresh smoke
rose from the building in the afternoon.
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.
Two Kenyan soldiers who had been
inside the mall shortly before the president spoke said the operation
was mostly over, but security forces were still combing the facility and
had not definitively cleared all the rooms.
They spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were under orders not to speak to the media.
Another
higher-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 also insisted on
anonymity.
Al-Shabab, 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
group used Twitter throughout the four-day siege 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 Tuesday.
"Remove your forces from our country and peace
will come."
Al-Shabab, responding to a request from AP, denied that any women had attacked the mall."
"We
have an adequate number of young men who fully committed and ready to
sacrifice their lives for the sake of Allah and for the sake of their
religion," said the al-Shabab press office in what is thought to be an
authentic email address.
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 among the wounded.
The
mall attack was the deadliest terrorist attack in Kenya since the 1998
al-Qaida truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, which killed more
than 200 people.
Security officials in
Nairobi always knew that Westgate, which was popular with foreign
residents of the capital as well as tourists and wealthy Kenyans, was a
likely target for terror attacks.
Matt Bryden,
a former coordinator of the U.N.'s Somalia monitoring group, said it
would have been impossible to adequately protect the complex without
transforming its character from a pleasant shopping experience into a
U.S. Embassy-like fortress.
"The issue now,"
he said, "is how this operation escaped detection. Was it so
well-planned and operational security so tight that they managed to beat
the system, or was it because there was a serious lapse of
intelligence, or was it both?"
"To prevent
future attacks the emphasis needs to be figuring it out and fix it, and
not turning all shopping malls and restaurants and hotels into
embassy-like fortresses."
A U.S. Embassy
vehicle, identifiable by its numbered diplomatic license plate, arrived
at the morgue on Tuesday. American officials have not confirmed the
deaths of any U.S. citizens, but it appeared possible the morgue visit
was by security officials with an agency like the FBI who were seeking
information about one of the bodies inside.
Kenyatta
said friendly nations offered various forms of assistance. American,
British, French and perhaps most importantly Israeli advisers assisted
the hostage-rescue mission, though security officials said all military
actions were carried out by Kenyans.
Kenyatta singled out President Barack Obama, as well as the leaders of Israel and Britain, for their support.
