Campus massacre: Shabab militants kill 147 students in Kenya

At least 79 wounded; troops end Garissa siege after 13 hours


Afp April 03, 2015
At least 79 wounded; troops end Garissa siege after 13 hours. PHOTO: REUTERS

KENYA/ GARISSA: Masked gunmen from Somalia’s Shabab militant group massacred 147 Kenyan students on Thursday in a day-long college campus siege, the country’s disaster response agency said, the deadliest attack in the country since US Embassy bombings in 1998.

Hurling grenades and firing automatic rifles, the gunmen stormed the university in the northeastern town of Garissa as students were sleeping, shooting dead dozens before setting Muslims free and holding Christians and others hostage.

“147 fatalities confirmed in the Garissa Attack,” the Kenya National Disaster Operation Centre said on its official Twitter feed, adding that the operation had ended.

At least 79 people were wounded in the assault, which lasted for some 13 hours from when the first grenades were used before dawn to blast open the gates of the university, near the lawless border with war-torn Somalia.

In the final hour before darkness fell, Kenyan troops stormed the student dormitory where the gunmen were holed up as explosions and heavy gunfire rang out. Troops then continued to search the campus for any possible insurgents.

“We are mopping up the area,” Interior Minister Joseph Nkaiserry told reporters, saying that all four gunmen had been killed after Kenyan soldiers launched an assault on the final building.

It is the worst attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi by al Qaeda, when 213 people were killed by a truck bomb.

The attack was claimed by al Qaeda-linked Shabab fighters.

Shabab spokesman Sheikh Rage told AFP the gunmen had taken non-Muslims hostage, and that their mission had been “to kill those who are against the Shabab.”

It was not clear if any of the students the Shabab said they had held were alive at the time of the final assault by troops.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 3rd, 2015.

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