Somali Islamists kill 70 students

GARISSA, KENYA: At least 70 students were killed by Somalia’s Shebab Islamist group as they attacked a Kenyan university on Thursday, the deadliest attack in the country since US embassy bombings in 1998.

Masked gunmen stormed the university in the north eastern town of Garissa as students were sleeping, hurling grenades and shooting dead others, before setting Muslims free and holding Christians and others hostage.

At least 79 people were wounded in the assault, which lasted for some 13 hours from when the first grenades were used before dawn to blast open the gates of the university, near the lawless border with war-torn Somalia.

In the final hour before darkness fell, Kenyan troops stormed the student dormitory where the gunmen were holed up as explosions and heavy gunfire rang out.

“We are mopping up the area,” interior minister Joseph Nkaiserry said, adding that four gunmen had been killed after Kenyan troops launched an assault on the final building.

“Unfortunately, we lost... a number of lives... it is in the region of 70 students, and 79 have been injured, nine of them critically.”

It is the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi by Al- Qaeda, when 213 people were killed.

“The terrorists, 90% of the threat has been eliminated... we have been able to confirm that four terrorists have been killed,” Nkaiserry said.

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AP PHOTO Medics help one of the injured people at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, on Thursday.