Gunmen knew campus well, survivor of attack says
GARISSA, Kenya — The Islamic extremists who slaughtered 148 people at a college in northeast Kenya as they shouted “God is great” appeared to have planned extensively, even targeting a site where Christians had gone to pray, survivors said Friday.
In Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, family members went to a morgue where some bodies had been airlifted from Garissa, victims of the worst attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy by al-Qaida which killed more than 200 people. Screaming and crying relatives were assisted by Kenyan Red Cross staffers.
Some Kenyans were angry that the government didn’t take sufficient security precautions. The attack Thursday at Garissa University College happened six days after Britain advised “against all but essential travel” to parts of Kenya, including Garissa.
One day before the attack, President Uhuru Kenyatta dismissed the warning as well as an Australian one pertaining to Nairobi and Mombasa.
Babu Owino, the chairman of the Students Organization for Nairobi University, said the government’s behaviour shows it is not serious in fighting extremist attacks.
Police on Friday were at the campus of Garissa University College, taking fingerprints from the bodies of the four assailants and of the students and security officials who died.
One of the first things that the al-Shabab gunmen did when they assaulted the campus early Thursday, survivor Helen Titus said, was to head for a lecture hall where Christians were in prayer. Al-Shabab is a Somaliabased Islamic extremist group with ties to al-Qaida.
“They investigated our area. They knew everything,” Titus told The Associated Press outside a hospital in Garissa where she was being treated for a bullet wound to the wrist. Officials said 79 people were wounded.
Titus, a 21- year- old English literature student, said she smeared blood from classmates on her face and hair and lay still in hopes the gunmen would think she was dead.