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Before Kenya Attack, Rehearsals and Planting of Machine Guns
(about 14 hours later)
NAIROBI, Kenya — A bloody standoff at a Kenyan shopping mall entered its fourth confused day on Tuesday as government forces said they were picking off the militants who stormed it, while a group claiming to be connected to the attackers said militants inside the mall were still resisting the government assault.
NAIROBI, Kenya — The plot was hatched weeks or months ago on Somali soil, by the Shabab’s “external operations arm,” officials say. A team of English-speaking foreign fighters was carefully selected, along with a target: Nairobi’s gleaming Westgate mall.
The Somalia-based Shabab militant group, which has taken responsibility for the attack, said in a message on a Twitter account linked with it that some hostages were still alive and that its fighters remained at large in the complex. The fighters, the Shabab said, are “still holding their ground.”
The building’s blueprints were studied, down to the ventilation ducts. The attack was rehearsed and the team dispatched, slipping undetected through Kenya’s porous borders, often patrolled by underpaid — and deeply corrupt — border guards.
The rattle of automatic weapons fire continued intermittently throughout Tuesday morning, and black smoke continued to pour out of the mall, seeming to contradict accounts from Kenyan officials late Monday that the crisis was nearing an end.
A day or two before the attack, powerful belt-fed machine guns were secretly stashed in a shop in the mall with the help of a colluding employee, officials say. At least one militant had even packed a change of clothes so he could slip out with fleeing civilians after the killings were done.
The exchanges on the ground were mirrored in a parallel clash of Twitter feeds, with both sides advancing their conflicting versions of what was happening within the sealed-off confines of the mall.
That is the picture emerging from American security officials of the massacre at the Westgate mall, which killed scores of people over the weekend. After a four-day standoff, President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya claimed Tuesday to have finally “ashamed and defeated our attackers,” declaring that the last militants still holed up inside the mall had been killed, though the bodies of many civilians, perhaps dozens, had yet to be recovered.
“We’re in control of Westgate,” Kenya’s Interior Ministry said in a Twitter message late Monday, referring to the large mall — an emblem of modernity and prosperity frequented by middle-class Kenyans and foreigners — that Islamist militants stormed on Saturday, killing more than 60 people.
Mr. Kenyatta said that “intelligence reports had suggested that a British woman and two or three American citizens may have been involved,” but that he could not confirm those reports. American officials said that they had not determined the identities of the attackers and were awaiting DNA tests and footage from the mall’s security cameras, but that they did know the massacre had been meticulously planned to draw “maximum exposure.”
“We believe all hostages have been released,” the Kenya National Disaster Operation Center said in a Twitter message. “Special forces and KDF soldiers combing the building. Situation of hostiles to be confirmed.”
“They had people in there, they had stuff inside there,” said an American security official who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “This was all ready to go when the shooters walked in.”
Kenyan officials also acknowledged Tuesday that three soldiers had died in tactical rescue operations inside the mall. Western officials have said these soldiers were killed on Sunday night, possibly execution style, after the militants captured them, though Kenyan authorities denied on Monday that any of their soldiers had been killed.
Kenya is now entering an official three-day period of mourning to mark one of the most unsettling episodes in its recent history. The authorities here, in a country widely perceived as an oasis of peace and prosperity in a troubled region, are struggling to answer how 10 to 15 Islamist extremists could lay siege to a shopping mall, killing more than 60 civilians with military-grade weaponry, then hold off Kenyan security forces for days.
On Tuesday, apparently confirming that fighting was continuing, Manoah Esipisu, a Kenyan government spokesman, said on his Twitter account, “One more terrorist of the Westgate siege has been gunned down, bringing the death toll of these terrorists to three.”
On multiple occasions, the Kenyan government said the mall was under its control, only to have fighting burst out again. Earlier on Tuesday, the Shabab, the Somali Islamist group that has taken responsibility for the attack, bragged in a Twitter message that their fighters were “still holding their ground.”
If only three terrorists have been killed, that would probably leave a number of assailants at large, either inside or outside the mall. Kenyan officials have said between 10 and 15 were involved in the assault.
Western security officials fear that several fighters slipped out of the mall during the mayhem of the attack, dropping their guns and disguising themselves as civilians, an account echoed by some witnesses.
The confusion underscored the complexities and challenges facing the authorities before they can declare the emergency over. The number of possible hiding places in a shopping mall that covers 350,000 square feet with more than 80 stores is seemingly endless. The Nakumatt superstore, inside the mall, is like a Wal-Mart, selling an array of merchandise like mattresses, strollers and flat-screen televisions with boxes and crates to hide in.
And the death toll could keep going up. The Kenya Red Cross said Tuesday that more than 50 people were missing.
According to the Kenyan government, 62 people were killed in the attack, and 175 injured. But the Kenyan Red Cross said in a statement on Tuesday that a further 51 were listed as missing, so the death toll could be higher.
The way the attack was carried out may have had something to do with the recent killing of Omar Hammami, a Shabab fighter who grew up in Alabama and became a phantomlike figure across the Somali deserts, known by his nom de guerre: Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, “the American.” Mr. Hammami was fatally shot by another wing of the Shabab less than two weeks ago.
Among the attackers were two or three young American men who appeared to be of Somali or Arab origin, Kenya’s foreign minister, Amina Mohamed, said Monday. In an interview on PBS, Ms. Mohamed said the American attackers were originally from Minnesota or Missouri. “That just goes to underline the global nature of the war that we’re fighting,” she said.
One reason for the rift was Mr. Hammami’s complaints that the Shabab had become too brutal toward fellow Muslims under the leadership of the group’s emir, Ahmed Abdi Godane. That brutality, Mr. Hammami said, was the reason the Shabab had become so unpopular in Somalia and lost so much territory recently.
The State Department’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said: “We have no definitive evidence of the nationalities or identities of the perpetrators at this time. We will continue to look into these reports.”
Stig Jarle Hansen, a Norwegian researcher who has published a book on the Shabab, said this rift might explain why the militants in the Nairobi mall decided to spare the lives of many Muslims. In the past, the Shabab have killed countless Muslims in Somalia with suicide bombs and buried Muslim girls up to their necks in sand and stoned them.
Kenyan forces have struggled since Saturday to vanquish the militants, who, after killing shoppers, holed up in various corners of the Westgate mall with military-grade weaponry. Hundreds of elite Kenyan troops — backed by armored personnel carriers, helicopters, planes and security officials from Britain, France, Israel and the United States — have been deployed, but the militants have refused to surrender.
“Even Osama bin Laden criticized Godane for being too harsh,” Mr. Hansen said. “This attack might have been Godane’s way of saying, ‘See, I’m not so harsh — to Muslims.’ ”
Kenyan officials have repeatedly tried to reassure the country — and the world — that they are bringing the crisis under control, mindful of the damage to the nation’s image as a cornerstone of stability in an often turbulent region.
Some Muslims were indeed killed in the mall. But many survivors of the attack said the militants had questioned people at gunpoint about their religion, ruthlessly sorting out non-Muslims for execution. Aleem Manji, a Kenyan radio announcer, remembered that as he uttered an Islamic prayer to save his life, the gunman threatening to kill him spoke fluent English.
“This will end tonight,” Kenyan officials declared as a major rescue operation got under way on Sunday evening. But shortly thereafter, three Kenyan commandos were shot and killed at close range and several hostages were killed as Kenyan forces tried to move in on militants hiding in a dark corner of the mall, Western officials said.
His accent was “light,” Mr. Manji recalled, saying it definitely was not Kenyan.
Kenya is a crucial American partner, its security forces working closely with their Western counterparts to contain Islamist militants in the region. Now Kenya’s capital, considered an oasis of prosperity in this part of Africa and an important base for Western embassies and businesses, has become a battleground in the conflict, and there is growing concern that this attack will not be the last.
American officials — who said they based their reconstruction of the plot on intelligence reports, witness statements and intercepted electronic messages — say the Shabab may have recruited English speakers from the United States and possibly other Western countries so that they would be able to operate effectively in Kenya, where English, along with Swahili, is the national language. Some survivors, including a newspaper vendor who watched one militant mercilessly shoot a toddler in the legs, said other gunmen had been young and either Somali or Arab.
Several witnesses said some of the ringleaders of the assault — in which masked gunmen moved methodically through the crowded mall on Saturday, killing men, women and children — might have escaped during the initial confusion. One witness said one assailant quickly tore off his clothes and changed into a new outfit before running out, hands raised, blending in with a crowd of fleeing civilians.
American officials said the militants must have had a back office in Kenya, a safe house to finalize their plot and store their guns. Witnesses said several militants had toted G3 assault rifles, a bulky weapon that Kenyan security services use. Intelligence analysts say this may mean the militants acquired their weapons from corrupt Kenyan officers, who are known to sell or rent out their guns, charging as little as a few dollars an hour.
Security officials in Nairobi said two other militants, both women who appeared to be directing other assailants during the killings, also managed to escape after the initial stage of the attack, raising fears that well-trained terrorists could be on the loose in Nairobi. Several witnesses have said some of the militants were clearly not African and may have been from Western countries.
After killing scores of shoppers, the militants retreated into a supermarket and used belt-fed machine guns to hold off the Kenyan forces, killing at least six members.
Kenya’s security forces seem to have been ill-prepared for a complex hostage situation against die-hard militants like this. According to several Western officials, the Kenyans initially rebuffed offers of assistance from the American government and turned instead to the Israelis, who dispatched advisers from the Israeli Defense Force. Those advisers have been working closely with the Kenyan commandos inside the mall, helping plan specific tactical operations, though officials said the Israeli advisers had not engaged in any combat and had stayed out of public view.
“You don’t bring something like a crew-served weapon through the door,” an American official said, referring to heavy machine guns. “Those must have been stored well beforehand.”
The American, French and British officials have been left with a more back-seat role from a command center just down the street from the mall, helping the Kenyans with the investigation of the attack and some intelligence matters, a high-ranking Kenyan official said Monday.
Another mystery: the women. Many witnesses have been emphatic that they saw at least two female militants, armed to the teeth and dressed in fatigues. Earlier, Kenyan officials asserted that there had been no women among the shooters, but on Tuesday Mr. Kenyatta seemed to revive the possibility that one of the assailants was a British woman.
“There’s too much consultation going on,” said the Kenyan official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “This should have been a small rescue operation, not preparing for war.”
Several intelligence analysts in Nairobi speculated that the woman was Samantha Lewthwaite, a Muslim convert who had been married to one of the suicide bombers who struck London in 2005.
On Monday afternoon, Kenyan security officials acknowledged that the effort to end the standoff had taken longer than expected, though they offered a different account of their setbacks, saying that about 10 Kenyan soldiers had been injured but none killed.
Kenyan authorities suspected that Ms. Lewthwaite had risen up through the ranks of extremist groups and was leading a terrorism cell on the Kenyan coast; though they nearly swooped in on her in 2011, she escaped. In Kenya, she is now known as “the white widow.”
The Shabab, a brutal Somali extremist group that had at least 20 fighters from the United States in 2010, many of them young Somali-Americans from a gritty part of Minneapolis, has said the attack was revenge for Kenya’s military incursion into Somalia, which began in 2011 when Kenya sent thousands of troops across the border to push back the Shabab.
Jeffrey
Gettleman and Nicholas Kulish reported from Nairobi, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
Three years ago, the group also claimed credit for the coordinated bombings that killed more than 70 people in Uganda as crowds gathered to watch the World Cup, calling it retribution for Uganda’s decision to send troops to Somalia as part of the African Union’s effort to stabilize the country.
But the possible presence of militants from outside Africa in the mall attack — and the way the assailants fended off attempts to dislodge them — has raised questions about the Shabab’s latest claims. Some Western security officials are beginning to wonder if other terrorist groups may be involved.
“This whole thing seems more advanced than anything the Shabab has ever done,” said one Western security official, who asked not to be identified because the operations were still continuing.
Julius Karangi, chief of the Kenyan general staff, said, “They are clearly a multinational collection from all over the world.”
The attack killed people from many countries, including Britain, Canada, China, France, Ghana and India. Many Kenyans fear that the crisis could seriously hurt the economy, which is fueled by tourism and outside investment and is highly vulnerable to swings in perception. Kenya’s currency fell against the dollar on Monday.
On Monday, reflecting the breadth of the crisis, judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague took the unusual step of suspending for one week the trial of Kenya’s deputy president, William Ruto, on charges of crimes against humanity so that he could return home to assist in the government’s response.
“We have been assaulted by hateful, unthinking cowards,” Mr. Ruto said at the airport upon his return.
“They work for the devil, we work for a living God,” he added. “We shall defeat them. We shall defeat them.”
Nicholas Kulish and Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Nairobi, and Alan Cowell from London. Reporting was contributed by Reuben Kyama and Tyler Hicks from Nairobi; Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem; Mark Mazzetti from Washington; Mohammed Ibrahim from Mogadishu, Somalia; and William K. Rashbaum from New York.
