Kenya mourns 148 killed in university attack by militants
Survivors give harrowing accounts
GARISSA, Kenya — The 20-year-old student called home from the university besieged by Islamic militants and frantically told her father, “There are gunshots everywhere! Tell Mum to pray for me — I don’t know if I will survive.”
The call by Elizabeth Namarome Musinai at dawn Thursday was one of several her family received as the attack and hostage drama unfolded at Garissa University College, where gunmen from the al-Shabab militant group killed 148 people.
Then, about 1 p.m., a man got on the line to demand that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta be contacted within two minutes and told to remove troops from neighboring Somalia, where they are fighting al-Shabab extremists.
He phoned back promptly. When told the president had not been contacted, he said, “I am going to kill your daughter.” Three gunshots followed, and he hung up. When Elizabeth’s father, Fred Kaskon Musinai, called the man back, he said he was told: “She is now with her God.”
Musinai said he is still hanging on to hope that Elizabeth somehow survived, although she is not on the list of 104 wounded.
Survivors and relatives gave other harrowing accounts of the siege by Islamic extremists as Kenya on Friday mourned the victims of the attack, the deadliest since the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi that killed more than 200 people.
The gunmen singled out Christians at the university, killing them on the spot. But Muslims also were among the dead, as were women, even though the attackers had said at one point that they, too, would be spared.
The masked attackers — strapped with explosives and armed with AK-47s — battled troops and police before the violence ended after about 13 hours.
Survivor Helen Titus, 21, said one of the first things the gunmen did when they entered the campus was to head for a lecture hall where Christians were in prayer.
“They investigated our area. They knew everything,” said Titus, a Christian, who was treated for a bullet wound to the wrist.
Titus said she smeared blood from classmates on her face and hair and played dead at one point.
The gunmen also told students hiding in dormitories to come out, assuring them that they would not be killed, Titus said. Many students did, and the gunmen shot them anyway, she said.
The White House said President Barack Obama called Kenyatta to express condolences.
Obama, who is scheduled to visit Nairobi in July, “emphasized his support for the government and people of Kenya,” according to a statement. It added that he and Kenyatta would discuss how to strengthen counterterrorism cooperation.