Sep 26, 7:20 PM EDT
One day, many dead: The start of Kenya mall siege
By TIM SULLIVAN
Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- It's 1:30 on Saturday afternoon in the Westgate Mall.
Rafia Khan is huddling in a crawl space of the Millionaires Casino with her
cousin and eight other people as gunmen roam the building and shoot, again
and again, into crowds of shoppers.
Now she is teaching those in hiding - perfect strangers - words that she
hopes will keep them alive.
The group had found the ceiling-level space as they fled gunfire and
explosions.
While they are hiding, word spreads by mobile phone text messages that
Islamic militants have taken control of the shopping mall that houses the
casino. Word also spreads that the gunmen are allowing Muslims to leave -
testing them by asking about their knowledge of Islam.
Khan and her cousin are the only Muslims among the small group. They decide
to teach the others to recite the Shahada, the short Arabic-language creed
that proclaims there is only one God and Muhammed is his prophet.
Over and over, Khan whispers the words slowly and phonetically, as if to a
child: "La il-a-ha il-Al-lah wa Mu-ham-mad ru-soul Al-lah."
---
Saturdays are crowded at the Westgate Mall, Nairobi's most elite retail
destination and a crossroads of the global economy. Rich foreign businessmen
go there, as do wealthy Kenyans. There are shopping diplomats, and aid
workers watching movies. They stroll the Nakumatt grocery store and have
sandwiches at Java House. They buy sunglasses, silk shirts and phones.
Much of Kenya lives on less than a couple of dollars a day, but these poor
also come to Westgate. They work inside, carrying boxes at the supermarket,
sweeping the marble floors. Or they just come to watch.
"Poor. Rich. High class. All of them are there," says Khan, whose husband is
a wealthy businessman.
On this Saturday, though, they would watch children weep and watch them die.
They would leave injured friends behind as they fled the attackers. They
would be shot, and hit by shrapnel from grenades. At least 67 would die in
what became a four-day siege by extremists from al-Shabab, the
Somalia-based, Muslim militant group.
This is what happened in those first hours.
---
The Westgate Mall entrance, about 12:36 p.m.:
Kenyan authorities believe there are as few as six gunmen, although the
number remains unclear. The first team, wearing bulletproof vests, storms
Westgate's front entrance, throwing grenades and firing assault rifles as
they run. They are clearly well-trained.
Few people inside the mall think of terrorism when they hear the first
explosion, and many think it's an electrical box giving way under Nairobi's
unreliable power grid. But as one blast gives way to another and the clatter
of machine-gun fire is heard, thousands of people know they need to move.
But where?
Outside at the entrance, Ben Mulwa, a community organizer driving to the
mall for lunch, jumps from his car and takes shelter in a shallow flowerbed.
He also thinks it's a bank robbery. An unarmed mall security guard takes
cover next to him.
Then he sees four attackers in the driveway, racing in his direction. All
carry rifles.
"I realized this is bigger trouble than I actually thought," he says.
Mulwa hears a bang, and the guard next to him is shot through the head. He
never moves again.
"That's when I saw the second gunmen actually pointing his rifle at me," he
says later. Three shots ring out. In his mind, he sees his 1-year-old
daughter. "I asked God: Why would you want my daughter to go through this?"
---
Al-Shabab once controlled wide swaths of Somalia, bringing with it a harsh
version of Islam that required punishments such as stoning adulterers to
death. The group has been threatening revenge on Kenya since 2011, when
Kenyan soldiers crossed into Somalia and helped hobble the al-Qaida-linked
militants.
The group said in an emailed statement after the attack that "any part of
the Kenyan territory is a legitimate target. ... Kenya should be held
responsible for the loss of life."
Authorities believe the group had planned long in advance, scouting the mall
carefully.
"They likely had cased the location for some time and knew very well the
best place and time to attack," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike
Rogers, R-Mich., said in a statement to The Associated Press.
The gunmen, for the most part, are dressed casually. Many are in khakis and
long-sleeved shirts. Some have checked scarves around their necks or flung
over their heads. Only some are wearing bulletproof vests.
Most carry AK-47 or G3 assault rifles, weapons widely used in the region and
easily available on the black market.
But some of the gunmen are draped with belts of large-caliber ammunition,
and witnesses hear the fast, frightening, echoing blasts of heavy
machine-gun fire.
As they storm through the mall, the music system keeps playing, an undertone
to the explosions and screams. The music of Adele and Ne-Yo filters through
the carnage.
---
Millionaires Casino crawl space, 12:57 p.m.:
"Are you okay???"
"Mum??"
"Can u message us Mum???" - Text messages Khan received from her 24-year-old
daughter while in hiding.
---
Parking area, third-level rooftop, about 1:30 p.m.:
The young mother watches the gunman shoot. Crowds of people are stumbling,
screaming, falling around her.
He is calm.
She is terrified.
Sneha Kothari-Mashru, 28 and a part-time radio DJ, watches through a tangle
of her long brown hair, which she has thrown across her face to appear as if
she is already among the dead. She has smeared blood onto her arm and her
clothes, taking it from the corpse of a teenage boy. She has kicked off her
blue high heels.
The gunman doesn't scream, she recalls days later. He rarely speaks. There
is no obvious anger in his expression. He seems confident, she says. "He was
normal."
About 15 minutes later, Kothari-Mashru watches as the gunman speaks quietly
to one family. She can't hear what is said, but the wife is dressed in the
billowing robes worn by highly observant Muslim women. Slowly, the family
members stand, raise their hands above their heads, and walk away.
Other witnesses described similar scenes. Elijah Kamau, who was at the mall
at the time of the midday attack, said he listened as militants told one
group of their plans.
"The gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave. They were safe," he said.
In the email statement, al-Shabab said its fighters "carried out a
meticulous vetting process at the mall and have taken every possible
precaution to separate the Muslims from the Kuffar (disbelievers) before
carrying out their attack."
---
This is not the rule, however, in the attack.
Dozens of Muslims are shot, and many are killed. Most often, the gunmen fire
wildly, spraying bullets into crowds and not bothering to ask about
religion.
Some of the bloodiest scenes occur just a few feet from where Kothari-Mashru
pretends to be dead.
A Junior Super Chef cooking competition was being held in the parking area
and dozens of people - many from Kenya's community of Ismaili Muslims - were
at long tables set up beneath car advertisements.
Gunmen had already fired through the crowds at the competition when
Kothari-Mashru hides nearby. Afterward, the tables are still arranged in
many places, complete with upholstered chairs and red tablecloths. But
puddles of blood are everywhere, with corpses one on top of another.
---
Parking area, third-level rooftop, about 3 p.m.:
Word goes out that someone has found a place to hide.
Kothari-Mashru decides to run. As she leaves, though, she sees a friend she
had met that day, lying down, obviously wounded.
"Can you get up?" Kothari-Mashru asks.
Her friend has been shot three times. She smiles at Kothari-Mashru, but says
she cannot move.
As the crowds swarm toward what seems to be safety, Kothari-Mashru leaves.
"It was heartbreaking," she says later.
She swallows.
"I don't know. I don't know," she says. "She couldn't get up. She couldn't
move. She just lay there."
Soon, Kothari-Mashru is among dozens of people on a back staircase heading
to safety. As she races down, she runs into her husband, who had convinced
two plainclothed policemen to help find her. Later, Kothari-Mashru's friend
was rescued and treated at a hospital.
---
Millionaires Casino, about 4 p.m.:
Police bang on the door of the casino. The 10 people hiding in the crawl
space are escorted out by security forces. They were never forced to recite
the creed.
---
Westgate Mall, about 6:30 p.m.:
Dozens, perhaps more than 100 people, remain scattered thorugh the mall as
the sun sets. Bodies are carried out as security forces push the gunmen into
ever smaller areas.
Mulwa, who had taken cover in the flowerbed and was shot in the leg, has
already been taken to safety by police and hospitalized. After surgery, he
is released from the hospital.
The siege does not end until Tuesday night, at the end of fierce gunbattles,
a fire and the collapse of part of the structure.
Among the dead is Kofi Awoonor of Ghana, a beloved 78-year-old poet who was
in Nairobi for a literary festival. His body was flown Wednesday to Accra,
the capital of his homeland, where hundreds gathered at the airport to
remember him as a man of peace.
In one verse, he was clearly conscious of his own mortality.
"When the final night falls on us
"As it fell upon our parents,
"We shall retire to our modest home
"Earth-sure, secure
"That we have done our duty
"By our people;
"We met the challenge of history
"And were not afraid."
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni na Dk. Kiiza Besigye Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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