Photograph by: Image from Facebook page , Robert Munk
An ongoing terror attack that began mid-day at a busy, upscale shopping mall in Kenya’s capital killed two Canadians, among them a 29-year-old diplomat, said officials.Annemarie Desloges was shopping at Nairobi’s upscale Westgate Mall when the attack that killed at least 59 and injured at least 175 people began.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“That people could be gunned down in broad daylight in a shopping mall on a weekend is just a tremendous tragedy. And obviously when you have someone who is serving their country abroad, it’s quite devastating,” said Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird in London, Ont., Saturday night. He was speaking at the Ontario Progressive Conservative party’s policy convention.
“When anyone is killed in a terrorist incident, it deeply affects us. But when it’s a Canadian, it hits home. And when it’s someone in government, obviously it just shakes us to the core.”
Desloges was posted to the Canadian High Commission as a liaison officer with the Canada Border Services Agency. She had been in the country for the past two years and had previously been posted to Delhi, India.
Desloges is survived by her husband Robert Munk who was injured in the attack, treated in hospital and subsequently released, said Baird.
There was no immediate information on the other Canadian killed. Baird said to the best of his knowledge, the other Canadian was not related to Desloges.
The attack only serves to steel Canada’s resolve in its fight against terrorism worldwide, he said.
“The fight against international terrorism is the great struggle of our generation, and we need to continue with the resolve to fight this,” he said. “It’s a joint effort. No government can tackle this problem on its own.”
Early Sunday morning local time, 12 hours after the attack began, gunmen remained holed up inside the mall with an unknown number of hostages. President Uhuru Kenyatta called the security operation under way “delicate” and said a top priority was to safeguard hostages.
In a written statement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’ condemned “… this cowardly, hateful act that apparently targeted innocent civilians who were simply out shopping.”
“Terrorist attacks like this seek to undermine the very values and way of life that Canadians cherish, and they reinforce the need for us to continue taking strong actions to protect the safety of Canadians no matter where they are in the world.”
Other foreigners were among the casualties: France’s president said two French women were killed, and there were reports of American citizens injured, but the U.S. State Department said it had no further details.
In a joint, written statement issued earlier in the evening, Baird, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander and Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney sent their thoughts and prayers to Desloges’ family and friends.
“Canadian public servants around the world selflessly serve our country proudly. Like Annemarie, they do so because they believe in the cause of humanity. They believe that their work will better the lives of many at home and around the world. They believe in the values that Canada represents.
We have no doubt that Annemarie touched the lives of many, and it is for that, that she will always be remembered.”
As the attack unfolded shortly after noon, terrified shoppers huddled in back hallways and prayed they would not be found by the gunmen lobbing grenades and firing assault rifles inside the city’s top mall. When the coast was thought to be clear, crying mothers clutching small children and blood-splattered men sprinted out of the four-storey mall.
Witnesses said the al-Qaida-linked gunmen asked the victims they had cornered if they were Muslim: If the answer was yes, those people were free to go. The non-Muslims were not.
Somalia’s Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility and said the attack was retribution for Kenyan forces’ 2011 push into Somalia. The rebels threatened more attacks.
Al-Shabab said on its Twitter feed — which was blocked by the social media site later in the day — that Kenyan security officials were trying to open negotiations. “There will be no negotiations whatsoever,” al-Shabab tweeted.
As night fell in Kenya’s capital, two contingents of army special forces troops moved inside the mall.
Police and military surrounded the huge shopping complex as helicopters buzzed overhead. A reporter said he saw a wounded Kenyan soldier put into an ambulance at nightfall, an indication, perhaps, of a continuing shoot-out inside.
Witnesses said at least five gunmen — including at least one woman — first attacked an outdoor cafe at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, a shiny, new shopping centre that hosts Nike, Adidas and Bose stores. The mall’s ownership is Israeli, and security experts have long said the structure made an attractive terrorist target.
The attack began shortly after noon with bursts of gunfire and grenades. Shoppers — expatriates and rich Kenyans — fled in any direction that might be safe: into back corners of stores, back service hallways and bank vaults. Over the next several hours, pockets of people poured out of the mall as undercover police moved in. Some of the wounded were moved out in shopping carts.”We started by hearing gunshots downstairs and outside. Later we heard them come inside. We took cover. Then we saw two gunmen wearing black turbans. I saw them shoot,” said Patrick Kuria, an employee at Artcaffe, the restaurant with shady outdoor seating.
Frank Mugungu, an off-duty army sergeant major, said he saw four male attackers and one female attacker. “One was Somali,” he said, but the others were black, suggesting that they could have been Kenyan or another nationality.
Al-Shabab, on its Twitter feed, said that it has many times warned Kenya’s government that failure to remove its forces from Somalia “would have severe consequences.” The group claimed that its gunmen had killed 100 people, but its assertions are often exaggerated.
“The attack at #WestgateMall is just a very tiny fraction of what Muslims in Somalia experience at the hands of Kenyan invaders,” al-Shabab said. Another tweet said: “For long we have waged war against the Kenyans in our land, now it’s time to shift the battleground and take the war to their land #Westgate.”
The militant group’s Twitter feed has been shut down several times for contravening the social media site’s policies.
Al-Shabab threatened in late 2011 to unleash a large-scale attack in Nairobi. Kenya has seen a regular spate of grenade attacks since then but never such a large terrorist assault.
Nairobi’s mortuary superintendent, Sammy Nyongesa Jacob, said Africans, Asians and Caucasians were among the bodies brought to the mortuary.
The gunmen told hostages that non-Muslims would be targeted, said Elijah Kamau, who was at the mall at the time of the midday attack.”The gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave. They were safe, and non-Muslims would be targeted,” he said.
Jay Patel, who sought cover on an upper floor in the mall when shooting began, said that when he looked out of a window onto the upper parking deck of the mall he saw the gunmen with a group of people. Patel said that as the attackers were talking, some of the people stood up and left and the others were shot.
The attack was carried out by terrorists, said police chief Benson Kibue. He did not specify a group. He said it was likely that no more than 10 attackers were involved.
Somalia’s president — the leader of a country familiar with terrorist attacks — said his country knows “only too well the human costs of violence like this” as he extended prayers to those in Kenya.
“These heartless acts against defenceless civilians, including innocent children, are beyond the pale and cannot be tolerated. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Kenya in its time of grief for these lives lost and the many injured,” President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said.
The gunmen carried AK-47s and wore vests with hand grenades on them, said Manish Turohit, 18, who hid in a parking garage for two hours.
“They just came in and threw a grenade. We were running and they opened fire. They were shouting and firing,” he said after marching out of the mall in a line of 15 people who all held their hands in the air.
A local hospital was overwhelmed with the number of wounded being brought in hours after the attack, so they had to divert them to a second facility. Dozens of people were wounded. Officials said Kenyans turned out in droves to donate blood.
The United Nations secretary-general’s office said that Ban Ki-moon has spoken with President Uhuru Kenyatta and expressed his concern. British Prime Minister David Cameron also called Kenyatta and offered assistance.
Kenyan authorities said they have thwarted other large-scale attacks targeting public spaces. Kenyan police said in September 2012 they disrupted a major terrorist attack in its final stages of planning, arresting two people with explosive devices and a cache of weapons and ammunition.
Anti-terror Police Unit boss Boniface Mwaniki said vests found were similar to those used in attacks that killed 76 people in Uganda who gathered to watch the soccer World Cup finals on TV in July 2010. Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for those bombings, saying the attack was in retaliation for Uganda’s participation in the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
