At least 30 killed in terror attack inside upscale Nairobi mall
NAIROBI: Masked gunmen stormed a packed upmarket shopping mall in Nairobi on Saturday, spraying gunfire and killing at least 30 people and wounding more than 60 others before holing themselves up in the complex.
The attackers were “pinned down” after hours of painstaking evacuations, with police going shop-to-shop to secure the Westgate shopping mall, a security source told AFP.
Senior police sources said they believed a well-organised “terror gang” of about 10 people was behind the attack on the shopping centre, which is popular with wealthy Kenyans and expatriates and was packed with around 1,000 shoppers when it was besieged at midday.
An eyewitness said he heard the gunmen speaking Arabic or Somali and saw the group execut ing shoppers, in what appeared to be the worst attack in Nairob since an Al-qaeda bombing at the US embassy killed more than 200 in 1998.
The Kenyan government which has troops battling Islamist Shebab insurgents in neighbouring Somalia, said it was still too early to say who was responsible. “Investigations have begun to find out the per petrators of this crime. I urge Kenyans not to speculate,” inte rior minister Joseph Ole Lenku said in a statement.
An AFP reporter said she saw at least 20 people rescued from a toy shop. Dozens of wounded some of them bleeding children were stretchered away.