Kenya in mourning
Security is increased on campuses as authorities identify victims of the university massacre.
Kenyan authorities began the grim task Friday of identifying the dead from an attack by the Muslim extremist group Shabab that killed at least 148, mainly Christian students, at a university in Garissa, near the border with Somalia.
Police imposed a duskto-dawn curfew in Garissa, Mandera and Tana River counties for two weeks to deter a recurrence of the stealth assault by the Somalia-based militants, the Mail and Guardian of Africa reported from the massacre scene.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered 10,000 police recruits to deploy to university campuses to bolster security, acknowledg ing that the nation had “suffered unnecessarily due to shortage of security personnel.”
Some Kenyans have reacted angrily to the massacre on Thursday, accusing authorities of inaction in spite of warnings last week from intelligence sources that Shabab extremists were plotting an attack on a multidenominational university, the Associated Press reported.
Emergency response workers were still collecting bodies from the campus a day after the 15-hour siege that also left 79 wounded and overwhelmed the local hospital, the Mail and Guardian said.
Bodies of the victims were being moved to a large mortuary in Nairobi, where next of kin were asked to identify them. A National Disaster Operations Center was also set up at the capital’s Nyayo Stadium to provide information to those still trying to contact survivors, Health Secretary James Macharia told reporters.
More than 500 students were being bused to the stadium for counseling and at least temporary relocation of their studies.
Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told Radio Andalus in Somalia that the militant group was responsible for the attack as part of its mission to “mercilessly” execute Christians.
Christian and Muslim leaders in Kenya urged their communities to unite against the militants’ aim to stir religious strife in the predominantly Christian country of 45 million with a burgeoning Muslim population in the east, including in Garissa.
Bishop Julius Kalu of the Mombasa Memorial Cathedral of the Anglican Church used his Good Friday sermon to urge Kenyans of all faiths to resist the extremists’ campaign to divide them.
“Security forces should not be discouraged in the fight against the terror elements,” the bishop was quoted as saying by the Daily Nation. “They should continue fighting to secure the country in a show of patriotism.”
Sheik Khalifa, a leader of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya, condemned the attack and asked the National Cohesion and Integration Commission to take action against those spreading religious intolerance and provocation through social media, the newspaper said.
The four gunmen who waged the predawn attack at the university died in the bloody climax of the raid. They detonated explosives strapped to their bodies as security forces moved in against them after 15 hours of executions and terror.
The Nairobi government offered a bounty of more than $50,000 for Mohammed Mohamud Kuno, the Shabab commander suspected of masterminding the attack, Kenyan news reports said.
Somali President Hassan Sheik Mohamud called on Kenyatta to bolster cooperation in the fight to extinguish the Shabab, which has been waging an insurgency in Somalia since 2006.
Thursday’s massacre was the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 Al Qaeda bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, where more than 200 died, mostly Kenyans.
The Shabab was also behind the September 2013 attack at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi that killed 67.