He said he and four others hid next to a large
walk-in refrigerator, while other people hid in the refrigerator itself. At one
point the attackers shot everyone inside the refrigerator, without noticing his
group. Mr. Omoding said a bullet grazed his chest but he kept quiet and
remained unseen, and was rescued at 9 p.m. Saturday.
Among the dead were four Britons, two Canadians
including a diplomat, two French women and a prominent Ghanaian poet, their
governments said. The British government, which said next of kin had been
informed, added that the number of British fatalities could rise. The local
press reported that a Kenyan radio presenter was killed on the roof, and Kenyan
President Uhuru Kenyatta said his nephew and the nephew's fiancée died in the
attack.
When the shooting started, some in the mall ran
in one direction only to find themselves facing another flank of shooters.
"We tried to escape through the main gate, but the attackers were also
coming through that gate. So we turned and tried to go back to the
basement," said Peter Ouma, a 25-year-old construction worker.
Mr. Ouma, who was in the basement when attackers
entered, said they were dressed in black with their faces masked "like
ninjas." He said there was one woman in that group.
"They were at all the exits; even if you
wanted to escape you couldn't," Mr. Ouma said. He first hid with about 10
others under a stairwell, then managed to slide underneath a car in the parking
garage and stayed there until he was rescued by soldiers Sunday morning.
The deadliest attack to hit Kenya since the 1998
U.S. embassy bombing started around 12:30 p.m. local time Saturday.
Most of the mall's shops are on three main
levels, with a few more in the basement and a movie theater that extends up
onto a higher level. When news of an attack there first filtered out to the
city through phone calls and text messages, initial assumptions were that it
was a robbery, a common occurrence in a crime-ridden city where going into
shopping centers requires handbag searches and a once-over with a metal
detector.
But inside the mall, the scene was bloody. A
waitress at the popular ArtCaffe restaurant said men entered the dining area
and just started shooting the patrons.
Over the course of the day, Kenyan police and
soldiers slowly pushed in, ushering out people who were hiding in restrooms,
banks' safe rooms or the depths of restaurant kitchens.
Security forces sought to surround the attackers
without knowing how many there were, where they were holed up or whether they
had hostages.
Mr. Kenyatta called the assault an "evil and
cowardly act of terrorism" and vowed to continue to fight against the
Somali militants. "I want to be very clear and categorical: We shall not
relent on the war on terror. We will continue that fight, and we urge all
people of goodwill throughout the world to join us and to ensure that we uproot
this evil," he said.
More than 175 were injured in the attack,
according to Joseph Ole Lenku, Kenya's secretary for the interior. He said more
than 1,000 people were safely evacuated.
Source: Wall Street Journal
No comments:
Post a Comment