Kenyan Leader Says Mall Siege Over as Shebab Threaten New Attacks
Kenya's president announced Tuesday that a siege of a Nairobi shopping mall was over, but said losses from the attack by Islamist gunmen were "immense" and at least 67 people had died.
"We have ashamed and defeated our attackers, that part of our task is completed," President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a televised address to the nation.
"Our losses are immense," he said. "We have been badly hurt, but we have been brave, united and strong. Kenya has stared down evil and triumphed. We have defeated our enemies and showed the whole world what we can accomplish."
Kenyatta said 61 civilians and six members of the security forces died in the siege. He said five attackers had been killed and that there were 11 suspects in custody.
The toll was provisional, he indicated, saying "three floors of the mall collapsed, trapping several bodies within the rubble including those of terrorists."
The president also called three days of national mourning.
Kenyatta said "intelligence reports had suggested that a British woman and two or three American citizens may have been involved in the attack."
"We cannot confirm the details at present but forensic experts are working to ascertain the nationalities of the terrorists."
The president promised "full accountability for the mindless destruction, deaths, pain, loss and suffering we have all undergone."
"These cowards will meet justice, as will their accomplices and patrons, wherever they are."
Earlier on Tuesday, Somalia's Shebab insurgents warned they would follow the ongoing siege in Nairobi's Westgate mall with further attacks if Kenyan troops did not pull out of Somalia immediately.
"If not, know that this is just a taste of what we will do... you should expect black days," Shebab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage said, speaking in Arabic in an audio broadcast released by the extremists.
Kenyan troops invaded southern Somalia to attack Shebab bases two years ago, joining forces with a Somali militia warlord and wresting the key port of Kismayo from the extremists.
Kenyan troops later joined the 17,700-strong African Union force deployed in Somalia.
"We will make them suffer what we suffer in southern Somalia, we are giving a warning to the Kenyan government and to all those who support it," Rage added.
Shebab fighters stormed the crowded Nairobi mall midday on Saturday, tossing grenades, firing automatic weapons and sending panicked shoppers fleeing.
At least 65 shoppers, staff and soldiers have been killed and close to 200 wounded in the siege, but concerns are high that the toll may rise, with the Shebab boasting about "countless number of dead bodies still scattered inside the mall".
Meanwhile, a British detective gave evidence on Tuesday in Kenya at the trial of suspected British militant Jermaine Grant, accused of ties to Shebab and plotting attacks.
Security was high for the trial in the port city of Mombasa, with Kenya on edge as the bloody siege at a Nairobi shopping mall, claimed by the Shebab, runs into its fourth day with militants claiming to still hold hostages.
Grant was arrested in December 2011 in Mombasa with various chemicals, batteries and switches, which prosecutors say he planned to use to make explosives.
Robert John Garrick, one of three detectives to testify from London's Scotland Yard police, described how he and colleagues searched Grant's house in Mombasa for chemicals after he was arrested.
Separate chemicals including battery acid were found, which when combined can produce explosives, Garrick told the court.
Prosecutors have accused Grant, a 30-year-old Muslim convert, of working with fellow Briton Samantha Lewthwaite -- the fugitive widow of British suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay, who blew himself up on a London Underground train on July 7, 2005, killing 26 people.
Lewthwaite, a 29-year-old mother-of-three and daughter of a British soldier, is wanted by Kenyan police and has been named in media reports as one of the possible attackers in the ongoing Westgate mall siege in Nairobi.
Grant is believed to have become radicalized as a teenager in the same British prison where "shoe bomber" Richard Reid first turned to Islam.
Reid, who claimed he was an al-Qaida recruit, is serving a life sentence in the United States for trying to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001.
Grant is charged along with his Kenyan wife, Warda Breik Islam, and two other Kenyans. He has denied the charges.
The trial continues Wednesday.
In December 2011 Grant pleaded guilty to charges of being in the country illegally and lying about his nationality, for which he was sentenced to two jail terms of two years, to run concurrently.
However, he was acquitted of robbery charges in a separate trial in Nairobi on September 13 this year.
The charges in that case included robbery with violence and raiding a police station over an incident in 2008, when Grant was arrested trying to enter war-torn Somalia dressed as a woman and later escaped custody in a shootout.
Source: Agence France Presse
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