At least 22 people were killed and dozens were wounded at the upscale Westgate mall in Kenya after gunmen threw grenades and fired automatic weapons, according to Yahoo! News.
The Somali militant group al-Shabab has said it carried out the attack.Kenyan military and police surrounded the mall, which had been hosting a children's day event, and helicopters flew overhead. Gunmen remained inside hours after the attack, although firing subsided.
People continued to trickle out from hiding places within the mall, which is frequented by expatriates and rich Kenyans in Nairobi's affluent Westland's neighborhood. It was not immediately known how many people remained inside, and whether they were still alive. Earlier in the day mall guards used shopping carts to wheel out wounded children, as others emerged crying or clutching their kids. Officers are going shop to shop to secure the area. The Kenyan Red Cross says 30 died, according to the BBC News.
"We are treating this as a terrorist attack," said Police Chief Benson Kibue, adding that there are likely no more than 10 attackers involved. Police did not say what group was responsible for the attack. Somali's Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, vowed in late 2011 to carry out a large-scale attack in Nairobi in retaliation for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to fight the insurgents.
Off duty Sgt. Major Frank Mugungu said Saturday he saw four male attackers and one female, and that he could clearly identify one of the gunmen as a Somali, though he could not identify the rest. The Westgate mall, with shops like Nike, Addidas and Bose, has Israeli ownership, and security experts have in the past identified the mall as a possible terror target in Nairobi. The gunmen announced that non-Muslims would be targeted, said Elijah Kamau, who was at the mall at the time of the midday attack.
