Weeping families await dead bodies

Cargo planes carrying corpses were flown on Friday afternoon from the north- eastern town of Garissa to Nairobi

Nairobi, April 3: Quietly weeping, families desperate for news of sons and daughters feared killed at the Kenya university massacre by Islamist gunmen wait for hours at a morgue in the capital Nairobi.

Cargo planes carrying corpses were flown Friday afternoon from the northeastern town of Garissa to Nairobi after the daylong killing spree on Thursday by Somalia’s Al Qaeda- linked Shebab insurgents. “I cannot talk,” were the last whispered words from Salome, a 20- year- old economics student, to her father Peter Wainaina, about an hour into the attack. Then she hung up.

Wainaina, 72, called her after receiving a terrible text message: “Al- Shebab is killing us. Goodbye. If we don’t make it, I loved you all. After that I tried later but her phone was off,” he said sadly. “Since then I have no news — I called the registrar of the university, but he could not give any information.” He waits beside around a hundred others, sitting in tents erected on the morgue car park, waiting in sombre, dignified silence, some quietly weeping.

Inside, 20 bodies lie on stretchers on the ground, in front of the doors of refrigerated cabinets. Draped with a sheet, their faces are revealed: 11 men on one side, nine women on the other. The attack on Thursday at the university in the northeastern town of Garissa was Kenya’s deadliest attack since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi.

“I tried to call him but the phone was out of contact, I tried to contact him all day,” said John Nyang’ au Masir ia, a 36year old casual labourer, describing his desperate hope he may still find his younger brother Josh alive.