Sunday, 6 October 2013

Kenya military names Westgate mall attack suspects

Four men believed to have been involved in the deadly shopping centre attack in Nairobi last month have been named.
The Kenyan military said Abu Baara al-Sudani, Omar Nabhan, Khattab al-Kene and Umayr - shown in new CCTV footage - were killed during the standoff.
Kenya said previously 10-15 militants had been involved, but the police chief says the figure may now be four to six.
The al-Shabab group said it carried out the attack on the Westgate mall on 21 September, leaving at least 67 dead.
The al-Qaeda-linked group said the attack was in retaliation for Kenya’s military involvement in Somalia.
Too early?
The naming of the men came as CCTV footage was aired showing four attackers calmly walking through a room in the mall holding machine guns.
Kenya Defence Forces spokesman Maj Emmanuel Chirchir told Reuters news agency: “I confirm these were the terrorists; they all died in the raid.”
Reuters quoted Maj Chirchir as saying that al-Sudani was an “experienced fighter” from Sudan and was believed to be the leader of the group.
Maj Chirchir said Nabhan was a Kenyan of Arab origin and al-Kene a Somali linked to al-Shabab. Further details about Umayr had not yet been verified, he said.
A Kenyan security analyst told the BBC that at least two of the names would be familiar to the Kenyan intelligence services.
Kenyan police Chief David Kimaiyo told Kenya’s KTN television station it was now believed that four to six gunmen had carried out the attack, not 10 to 15.
“None of them managed to escape from the building after the attack,” he said.
Mr Kimaiyo also said that wanted British woman Samantha Lewthwaite had not been involved.
“We have also established that she was not part of the attackers in the building. There was no woman,” he said.
Ms Lewthwaite, 29, is the widow of one of the four suicide bombers who attacked London on 7 July 2005.
Kenya had earlier said five attackers were killed in the security operation and that nine people were in custody.
The BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse in Nairobi says the latest CCTV footage is from a limited part of the complex and, with some eyewitnesses reporting a two-pronged attack, it is too early to say definitively how many gunmen were in the building.

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