147 killed as Islamist militants attack Kenyan university

PanARMENIAN.Net -

Al-Shabab Islamist militant group gunmen rampaged through a university in northeastern Kenya at dawn Thursday, killing 147 people in the group's deadliest attack in the East African country. Four militants were slain by security forces to end the siege just after dusk, the Associated Press reports.

The masked attackers — strapped with explosives and armed with AK-47s — singled out non-Muslim students at Garissa University College and then gunned them down without mercy, survivors said. Others ran for their lives with bullets whistling through the air.

Amid the massacre, the men took dozens of hostages in a dormitory as they battled troops and police before the operation ended after about 13 hours, witnesses said.

When gunfire from the Kenyan security forces struck the attackers, the militants exploded "like bombs," Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said, adding that the shrapnel wounded some of the officers.

Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage said fighters from the Somalia-based extremist group were responsible. The al Qaida-linked group has been blamed for a series of attacks in Kenya, including the siege at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013 that killed 67 people, as well as other violence in the north. The group has vowed to retaliate against Kenya for sending troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the militants staging cross-border attacks.

Most of the 147 dead were students, but two security guards, one policeman and one soldier also were killed in the attack, Nkaissery said, according to the AP.

At least 79 people were wounded at the campus 145 kilometers (90 miles) from the Somali border, he said. Some of the more seriously wounded were flown to Nairobi for treatment.

A dusk-to-dawn curfew was ordered in Garissa and three nearby counties.

One suspected extremist was arrested as he tried to flee, Nkaissery told a news conference in Nairobi. Police identified a possible mastermind of the attack as Mohammed Mohamud, who is alleged to lead al-Shabab's cross-border raids into Kenya, and they posted a $220,000 bounty for him. Also known by the names Dulyadin and Gamadhere, he was a teacher at an Islamic religious school, or madrassa, and claimed responsibility for a bus attack in Makka, Kenya, in November that killed 28 people.

Police said 312 people have been killed in al-Shabab attacks in Kenya from 2012 to 2014. Last week, al-Shabab claimed responsibility for a siege at a Mogadishu hotel that left 24 people dead, including six attackers.