NAIROBI, Kenya - Gunmen threw grenades, fired automatic weapons and targeted non-Muslims at the upscale Westgate Mall in Kenya’s capital Saturday, killing at least 39 people and wounding dozens more, a Red Cross official and witnesses said.
At least 39 people died and more than 150 were wounded in the assault, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta announced on national TV, while disclosing that members of his family were among the dead.
About 12 hours after the attack began, gunmen remained holed up inside the mall with an unknown number of hostages. Kenyatta called the security operation underway “delicate” and said a top priority was to safeguard hostages.
As of Saturday night, Kenyan commandos had cornered several of the assailants on the third floor of the mall, witnesses said. Western officials said they expected that the assailants would fight to the death, though the Kenyan news media reported that one wounded gunman had been captured, and local news media reported that the gunman later died in a hospital.
Foreigners were among the casualties. France’s president said two Frenchwomen died, and the wife of a foreign worker employed by the U.S. Agency for International Development also was killed. The U.S. State Department said Saturday night that four American citizens were reported injured.
No details about the injured Americans were released by the State Department, which cited privacy concerns. Consular officers were in contact with the injured and were providing appropriate assistance, a State Department official said.
As the attack unfolded shortly after noon Saturday, the al-Qaida-linked gunmen asked the victims they had cornered whether they were Muslim: If the answer was yes, several witnesses said, 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 effort was intended to chase the militant group away from Kenya’s borders.
The rebels threatened more attacks.
Al-Shabab said on its Twitter feed 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.
Witnesses said at least five gunmen - including at least one woman - first attacked an outdoor cafe at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, a new shopping center 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, 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 a restaurant.
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.
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. Al-Shabab also has attacked churches in eastern Kenya, mosques in Nairobi and government outposts along the desiccated Kenya-Somalia border.
In a statement, the State Department condemned “this senseless act of violence that has resulted in death and injury for many innocent men, women, and children.”
Secretary of State John Kerry called the attack “a heartbreaking reminder that there exists unspeakable evil in our world which can destroy life in a senseless instant.”
“Attacks like this can’t change who we are, a people committed to peace and justice for all, but rather must reaffirm our determination to counter extremism and promote tolerance everywhere,” Kerry said in a statement.
Noting the death of the wife of the Agency for International Development worker, Kerry commended agency workers for their efforts around the world and said the U.S. pledged “our commitment to do whatever we can to assist in bringing the perpetrators of this abhorrent violence to justice, and to continue our efforts to improve the lives of people across the globe.”
The U.S. Embassy said it was in contact with local authorities and offered assistance. Some British security personnel assisted in the response to the attack.
The spokesman for the White House National Security Council, Caitlin Hayden, said the U.S. has offered its full support to the Kenyan government to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“We will continue to stand with the Kenyan people in their efforts to confront terrorism in all its forms, including the threat posed by al-Shabab,” Hayden said. “This cowardly act against innocent civilians will not shake our resolve.”
Elijah Kamau, who was at the mall at the time of the attack, said the gunmen told hostages that non-Muslims would be targeted.
“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 a window onto the upper parking deck, 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.
Marco Lui, a Bloomberg News correspondent who was on the second floor when the attack started, said he heard two explosions within about five minutes of each other.
“We heard a noise from the ground floor, and people started running to the parking area on the rooftop,” said Lui. “They were panicking, and then the second blast went off and people were even more panicked.”
The gunmen entered through the main door of the mall and went on a shooting rampage, moving from the ground level to upper floors,according to an emailed statement from ArtCaffe.
“On hearing the gunfire, patrons and staff in the mall ran for cover at every level,” the company said.
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 defenseless 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 leaving the mall in a line of 15 people who all held their hands in the air.
A hospital was overwhelmed with the number of wounded hours after the attack, so patients were diverted to a second facility. 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 Kenyatta and expressed his concern. British Prime Minister David Cameron also called Kenyatta and offered assistance.
Anti-terror Police Unit leader Boniface Mwaniki said vests found at the scene 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 inthe African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
Kenyan authorities said they have thwarted other large-scale attacks targeting public spaces. Kenyan police said in September 2012 that 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.
Kenya serves as the economic engine of East Africa, and while it has been mostly spared the violence and turmoil of many of its neighbors, it is no stranger to terrorist attacks. In 1998, al-Qaida killed more than 200 people in a truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy in downtown Nairobi, while simultaneously attacking the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Islamist terrorists also struck an Israeli-owned hotel on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast in 2002 and fired missiles at an Israeli airliner.
Information for this article was contributed by Jason Straziuso, Tom Odula, Carley Petesch, Cassandra Vinograd, Douglass K. Daniel and staff members of The Associated Press; by Reuben Kyama, Nicholas Kulish and Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times; by Eric Ombok and Sarah McGregor of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/22/2013