Bomb experts comb Kenya mall

EXPLOSIVE experts searched yesterday for possible booby traps in the wreckage of a Nairobi shopping mall after a four-day bloodbath by Islamist gunmen, as fears grew over the fate of dozens of people still missing.

“They are checking for any potential explosive devices left behind,” a security source said, adding that specialist remotecontrolled demining robots were on hand.

A reporter outside the bulletriddled mall saw teams of sniffer dogs, which will check not only for explosives, but in the grim expectation of finding the bodies of more than 60 missing victims.

President Uhuru Kenyatta announced late on Tuesday the 80-hour siege was over, with the “immense” loss of 61 civilians and six members of the security forces. But police said the death toll was provisional, while the Kenyan Red Cross said 63 people were still listed as missing.

The president said “three floors of the mall collapsed, trapping several bodies within the rubble including those of terrorists”. Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked al- Shabaab rebels said the group carried out the attack in retaliation for Kenya’s two-year battle against the extremists’ bases in the country.

Five attackers were killed and 11 suspects detained.

In one of the worst attacks in Kenya’s history, the militants marched into the four-storey, part Israeli-owned Westgate Mall at midday on Saturday, spraying shoppers with automatic weapons fire and tossing grenades.

Mr Kenyatta said “forensic investigations were under way to establish the nationalities of all those involved”.