Kenya Garissa University College massacre: al-Shabaab's deadliest attack on christians

They arrived at dawn, strapped with explosives and armed with AK-47s, and separated the non-Muslims from the Muslims. In al-Shabaab's deadliest attack on Kenya, the gunmen then shot the non-Muslims without mercy, according to witnesses. The gunmen rampaged through Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya (dawn Thursday local time), killing 147 people. Four militants from the Somalia-based militant group were slain by security forces to end the siege just after dusk local time.
A spokesman for al-Shabaab said during the siege that the group was inside the campus and had released Muslim students.
"We've killed many people; Kenyans will be shocked when they go inside," he was quoted by the BBC as saying.

One student who witnessed the attack, Collins Wetangula, said he could hear militants opening doors and asking those hiding inside if they were Muslim or Christian. "If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot," he said. "With each blast of the gun I thought I was going to die."
As the students were gunned down, others ran for their lives with bullets whistling through the air.
Amid the massacre, the men took dozens of hostages in a dormitory as they battled troops and police before the operation ended after about 13 hours, witnesses said.
When gunfire from the Kenyan security forces struck the attackers, the militants exploded "like bombs", Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said, adding that the shrapnel wounded some of the officers.
Al-Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage said fighters from the group were responsible. The al-Qaeda-linked group has been blamed for a series of attacks in Kenya, including the siege at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013 that killed 67 people, as well as other violence in the north. The group has vowed to retaliate against Kenya for sending troops to Somalia in 2011 to prevent the militants staging cross-border attacks.
Most of the 147 dead were students, but two security guards, one policeman and one soldier also were killed in the attack, Nkaissery said.
At least 79 people were wounded at the campus 145km from the Somali border, he said. Some of the more seriously wounded were flown to Nairobi for treatment.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew was ordered in Garissa and three nearby counties.

Students take shelter in a vehicle after fleeing gunmen. Photo / AP

One suspected extremist was arrested as he tried to flee, Nkaissery told a news conference in Nairobi.
Police identified a possible mastermind of the attack as Mohammed Mohamud, who is alleged to lead al-Shabaab's cross-border raids into Kenya, and they posted a US$220,000 ($292,890) bounty for him. Also known by the names Dulyadin and Gamadhere, he was a teacher at an Islamic religious school, or madrassa, and claimed responsibility for a bus attack in Makka, Kenya, in November that killed 28 people.
Collins Wetangula told the Associated Press that he was preparing to take a shower when he heard gunshots coming from Tana dorm, which hosts both men and women, 150m away.
The campus has six dorms and at least 887 students, he said. When he heard the gunshots, he locked himself and three roommates in their room, said Wetangula, who is vice chairman of the university's student union.
"All I could hear were footsteps and gunshots. Nobody was screaming because they thought this would lead the gunmen to know where they are," he said.
He added: "The gunmen were saying, 'Sisi ni al-Shabaab'," - Swahili for "We are al-Shabaab."
He heard the attackers arrive at his dormitory, open the doors and ask if the people who had hidden inside were Muslims or Christians.
"If you were a Christian, you were shot on the spot," he said.
The gunmen then started shooting rapidly, as if exchanging fire, Wetangula said. "The next thing, we saw people in military uniform through the window of the back of our rooms who identified themselves as the Kenyan military," he said. The soldiers took him and around 20 others to safety.
The attack began about 5:30am local time, as morning prayers were under way at the university mosque, where worshippers were not attacked, said Augustine Alanga, a 21-year-old student.
At least five heavily armed, masked gunmen opened fire outside his dormitory, turning intense almost immediately and setting off panic, he told the AP by telephone.
The shooting kept some students indoors but scores of others fled through barbed-wire fencing around the campus, with the gunmen firing at them, he said.
"I am just now recovering from the pain as I injured myself while trying to escape. I was running barefoot," Alanga said.
As terrified students streamed out of buildings, arriving police officers took cover.
Kenya's National Police Service said a "fierce shootout" ensued as police guarded the dorms.
Wetangula, who was rescued by troops, said one soldier instructed a group of students to run and to dive for cover at their command as they ran to safety.
"We started running and bullets were whizzing past our heads, and the soldiers told us to dive," Wetangula said.
The soldier told students later that al-Shabaab snipers were perched on a three-storey dormitory called the Elgon, he said.
President Uhuru Kenyatta has been under pressure to deal with insecurity caused by a string of attacks by al-Shaabab.
In a speech to the country, he said he had directed the police chief to speed up the training of 10,000 police recruits because Kenya has "suffered unnecessarily due to shortage of security personnel".
Kenya's northern and eastern regions near the Somali border have seen many attacks blamed on al-Shabaab.
Last month, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for attacks in Mandera county on the Somali border in which 12 people died.
Police said 312 people have been killed in al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya from 2012 to 2014.
Last week, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for a siege at a Mogadishu hotel that left 24 people dead, including six attackers.

Timeline: Al-Shabaab attacks

March 2015 Militants stormed the Maka al-Mukarramah Hotel in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. At least 24 people, including six attackers, were killed. The battle lasted more than 12 hours as Somalia's security forces tried to dislodge the gunmen who had taken control of parts of the hotel.
February 2015 Twenty-five people were killed and 40 wounded in suicide attacks at the Central Hotel in Mogadishu. Government officials were meeting at the hotel at the time, and Mogadishu's deputy mayor and two politicians were among the dead.
December 2014 Gunmen roused sleeping quarry workers in the dead of night in northern Kenya. After separating out the non-Muslims by asking them to recite the Islamic creed, the attackers killed 36 of them - most with a gunshot to the back of the head.
November 2014 Gunmen attacked a bus in northern Kenya at dawn, targeting and killing 28 passengers who could not recite the Islamic creed and were assumed to be non-Muslims.
September 2013 Militants used grenades and assault rifles to attack the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, killing at least 67 people.
Most of the 147 victims of a terror attack on a Kenyan university on Thursday died execution-style as they lined up waiting for their turn to be shot, a senior Kenyan government source has told The Telegraph.
Some students were killed as they spoke to their parents on the telephone, having been ordered to call with messages from the gunmen that their aim was to force Kenyan troops to leave Somalia, the source added.
"This is the level of depravity that we are dealing with, it is something beyond the comprehension of anyone normal like you or I," the source, who spoke anonymously, said. "These are not people who can be reasoned with, only force can stop them."

 

The suicide vest-clad gunmen, whom the Somali terror group al-Shabaab claimed as their own after they stormed Garissa University in northeastern Kenya, also told students they were "here to make your Easter holidays better" and warned of further attacks to come, survivors revealed.

Maureen Manyengo, a 21-year-old Christian from western Kenyan who was training to be a teacher, described how she hid inside her wardrobe after seeing several friends killed.
"I could hear the attackers telling my friends, 'Do not worry, we will kill you, but we will die too'," she said.
She said the terrorists also told the cowering students: "We are not bad guys, we are just here to make your Easter Holiday better."
Reuben Nyaora, an aid worker who was among the first to enter the university after the terrorists' final clash with Kenyan special forces late on Thursday afternoon, described seeing women rise from among the corpses covered in blood but unscathed.
"I have seen many things, but nothing like that," said Mr Nyaora. "There were bodies everywhere in execution lines, we saw people whose heads had been blown off, bullet wounds everywhere. It was a grisly mess."
So far, 147 people have been confirmed dead and 79 injured in Kenya's worst terror attack for two decades, but officials have admitted that the death toll could climb higher still as piles of bodies are recounted.
Meanwhile, questions remained about how the 15-hour siege reached its final bloody end and how the death toll jumped from 70 in the late afternoon to 147 just over an hour later.
Kenya's interior minister confirmed the gunmen had been strapped with explosives and blew up "like bombs" as they were shot by an elite special forces squad.

Kenyan Muslims demonstrate against the attack and in solidarity with those Christians targeted in the attack. Photo / AP

The Telegraph's government source said that when the squad reached the room where the attackers were holed up, they had just six hostages with them, whom they killed. They then denoted their vests as they died in a hail of bullets, the source added.
At the gates of Garissa University, soldiers kept large crowds of sobbing relatives at bay as inside, the bodies of those killed were recounted.
"I am so worried, I had a son who was among the students trapped inside the college, and since yesterday I have heard nothing," said Habel Mutinda, an elderly man, his face streaming with tears.
"I tried to identify his body among those killed. I have to do that before the body goes bad in the heat. I have been camping overnight. It is really hard, it hurts."
The gunmen targeted Christians over Muslims according to al-Qaeda guidelines the terrorists who attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi two years ago also followed.
One witness described how they headed directly to a lecture hall where Christian students had gathered for an early morning prayer session.
Another told how Muslim classmates tried to dissuade them from their murderous spree, but were ordered to go to the college's mosque where they were told they would be safe from harm.
Kenya's government, which has faced criticism for its failure to act on intelligence to combat threats, said it would not be "intimidated or humiliated" by what happened.
"The government is determined to fight back the terrorists, and I am confident we shall win this war against our enemies," said Joseph Nkaissery, the Interior Minister.
World leaders offered their condolences and renewed pledges of support to the Kenyan government in tackling the terror threat. Pope Francis said in a statement he would pray for a "change of heart" by the terrorists.
"In union with all people of good will throughout the world, His Holiness condemns this act of senseless brutality," The Vatican said in a statement.
Questions are now being asked about how the authorities reacted to intelligence that an attack was imminent, potentially on a university, and whether it has learned lessons from its haphazard response to the Westgate attack, in which 72 people died.
Peter Aling'o, senior researcher with the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi, said al-Shabaab was taking advantage of "gaps" in Kenya's intelligence-led security planning.
"I think Kenya hasn't learnt anything at all in terms of how to respond to terror attacks," he said. "What we are seeing is a knee-jerk reaction that sends in security personnel in a manner that suggests they are not completely aware of what they are responding to."
Some of those who escaped Thursday's massacre said posters had been put up around campus and the university's administrators warned about an imminent attack but they were "ignored" or dismissed as an April Fool's prank.
"Yesterday there were those notices, but as it was April 1, we just thought that it was fooling," a student named only as Katherine told AFP.
Students from a nearby teacher training college said they too had been warned that "strangers" suspected to be terrorists had been spotted in Garissa in the days leading up to the attack. As a result, their college was closed and they were sent home.
Five people have been arrested in connection with an attack, CNN reported on Friday evening, citing Joseph Nkaissery, the Kenyan Interior Minister.
He added that the university would be able to confirm on Saturday whether everyone had been accounted for.

A woman is helped after viewing the body of a relative killed at Garissa University in Kenya. Photo / AP

A 20-year-old student called her father from a university besieged by Islamic militants and told him, "There are gunshots everywhere! Tell Mum to pray for me — I don't know if I will survive."
The call by Elizabeth Namarome Musinai at dawn on Thursday was one of several her family received as the attack and hostage drama unfolded at Garissa University College, where al-Shabab militants killed 148 people.
Around 1 pm, a man got on the line and demanded Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta be contacted within two minutes and told to remove troops from neighbouring Somalia, where they are fighting al-Shabab extremists.
When told the president had not been contacted, he said, "I am going to kill your daughter." Three gunshots followed, and he hung up. When Elizabeth's father, Fred Kaskon Musinai, called the man back, he said he was told: "She is now with her God."

Survivors and relatives gave other harrowing accounts of the siege by Islamic extremists as Kenya mourns the victims of the attack, the deadliest since the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi that killed more than 200 people.
Survivors recounted how the masked gunmen taunted students before killing them.
Many were forced to phone their parents to urge them to call for Kenyan troops to leave Somalia — and were shot anyway.
As the gunmen prowled the corridors hunting down more people to kill, some students smeared blood from their dead friends over their bodies to pretend they had been shot.
"There were bodies everywhere in execution lines, we saw people whose heads had been blown off, bullet wounds everywhere, it was a grisly mess," said Reuben Nyaora, an aid worker who helped the wounded.
Just before darkness fell, Kenyan troops moved in on the dormitory where the gunmen were holed up. The siege ended with four gunmen killed in a hail of gunfire, and one suspect reportedly arrested. At least 79 people were also wounded. Those killed were students apart from three policemen and three soldiers.
The masked attackers — strapped with explosives and armed with AK-47s — singled out Christians at the university, killing them on the spot. But Muslims also were among the dead, as were women, even though the attackers had said at one point that they, too, would be spared.
The bodies of the 148 students and security officers have been flown to the Nairobi morgue where screaming and crying family members were assisted by Red Cross staff, who tried to console them.
Survivor Helen Titus said the gunmen immediately headed for a lecture hall where Christians were at prayer.
"They investigated our area. They knew everything," said Titus, a Christian, who was being treated in Garissa for a bullet wound to the wrist. The 21-year-old English literature student said she smeared blood from classmates on her face and hair and played dead at one point.
The gunmen also told students hiding in dormitories to come out, assuring them that they would not be killed, Titus said.
"We just wondered whether to come out or not," she said. Many students did, and the gunmen shot them anyway.
Another survivor, Nina Kozel, said she was awakened by screaming. Many students hid in vain under beds and in closets in their rooms, she added.
"They were shot there and then," she said, adding that the killers shouted "God is great" in Arabic.
Those who surrendered were either selected for killing, or freed in some cases, apparently because they were Muslim, she said.
Al-Shabab has struck several times in Kenya, including the siege at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013 that killed 67 people, to retaliate against Kenya for sending troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the militants and stabilise the government in Mogadishu.
Pope Francis condemned the latest attack as an act of senseless brutality and urged Kenyan authorities to work to bring an end to such attacks and "hasten the dawn of a new era of brotherhood, justice and peace".
The UN Security Council expressed outrage — a word it rarely uses — in condemning the attack.
President Barack Obama expressed condolences "for the lives lost during the heinous terrorist attack".
"The future of Kenya will not be defined by violence and terror; it will be shaped by young people like those at Garissa University College."
The attack came six days after Britain advised "against all but essential travel" to parts of Kenya, including Garissa.
A day before the attack, Kenyatta dismissed that warning saying: "Kenya is safe as any country in the world. The travel advisories being issued by our friends are not genuine."
One man posted a photo on Twitter showing about 100 bodies lying face-down on a blood-smeared courtyard with the comment: "Our inaction is betrayal to these Garissa victims."
On Friday, a huge crowd of traumatised survivors and relatives gathered at the university gate, desperate for news of who was killed or wounded. The toll was set at 148 after emergency workers had scoured the campus for bodies.

US President Barack Obama. Photo / Getty Images

US President Barack Obama called Kenya's leader and vowed to stand "hand-in-hand" with its government and people Friday, as they reel from an Islamist attack that killed 148 university students and security officers.
"Words cannot adequately condemn the terrorist atrocities that took place at Garissa University College, where innocent men and women were brazenly and brutally massacred," Obama said.
Somalia's Shebab Islamists have claimed responsibility for the attack, which was Kenya's deadliest since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, and the bloodiest ever by the Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants.
Obama will make a long-awaited return to Kenya this July, visiting his father's homeland for the first time since becoming US president.
"I know firsthand the extraordinary resilience and fundamental decency of the people of Kenya. So I know that the people of Garissa and all of Kenya will grieve, but their determination to achieve a better and more secure future will not be deterred," Obama said.

"The future of Kenya will not be defined by violence and terror; it will be shaped by young people like those at Garissa University College," he added.
"This is a message I will relay to the Kenyan people when I visit Kenya in July."
Obama also called Kenyan leader Uhuru Kenyatta to offer his and the First Lady Michelle Obama's condolences.
For much of Obama's time in power, Kenya's President Kenyatta had been under investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Kenyatta was indicted on five counts of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in 2007-08 post-election violence that killed an estimated 1,200 people.
The 53-year-old son of Kenya's founding father protested his innocence until the case was withdrawn in December.
Obama said that "he looks forward to meeting with President Kenyatta again in Nairobi in July," the White House said.
"The two leaders will discuss how to strengthen counterterrorism cooperation and continue to work together to build a safer and more prosperous future for Kenya and the broader region."

Relatives of victims of the Kenyan University attack were invited to Chimomo Mortuary in Kenya to identify the bodies of their loved ones who were massacred at their school by Al-Shabaab militants. This story should be the number trending story in the world right now but sadly, it's not.