Kenyan police say 11 arrested after deadly hotel attack

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenyan authorities on Thursday arrested nine more people for their alleged involvement in the deadly extremist attack on a luxury hotel complex in Nairobi this week, bringing the total number of suspects detained to 11, police said.

The suspects, “are being questioned on their specific roles in the terrorist attack” at the dusitD2 complex on Tuesday, said a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Two people were taken into custody on Wednesday.

The attack took the lives of 20 civilians, one police officer and five attackers.

Kenyan bomb disposal experts, meanwhile, found and safely detonated an explosive left over from the attack, and the Kenya Red Cross said no one appeared to be missing after it checked nearly 100 reported cases.

The Kenyan government said its quick reaction to the assault reflected improvements in its ability to respond to such brazen attacks on civilian targets. It was “much better handled” in comparison to the 2013 attack on the nearby Westgate Mall, said Joseph Mucheru, the information minister. Police took hours to respond to that attack and official information was scarce or conflicting, leading to reforms.

“The speed, the response and the conclusion of this matter was swift,” Mucheru told journalists.

Al-Shabab, the al-Qaida-linked extremist group that carried out the 2013 attack that killed 67 people, claimed responsibility for the hotel assault.

In contrast to the government’s fumbling response to the 2013 attack, the better-coordinated operation at the hotel was under the “central command” of the head of the paramilitary wing of the Kenyan police known as the General Service Unit, according to The Standard, a Kenyan newspaper. It also said there were “fewer implausible narratives from senior security officials than happened in 2013.”

Still, the newspaper said, there were hard questions including: “How did the assailants manage to move their weaponry through the numerous roadblocks to their hideout and to the scene of crime undetected?”