Wednesday, December 11, 2013
The four attackers responsible for killing at least 67 people at a
Kenyan shopping mall may have escaped due to lax security, according to a
New York police report released Tuesday.The victims aged eight
to 78, from 13 different countries, were killed at the Westgate mall in
Nairobi during a terrifying assault claimed by Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked
Shebab terror group.
The media speculated the gunmen may have
escaped in the chaos of the September fighting, although security
sources in Kenya said they died in a final stand off with commandos.
The
New York police report said the last confirmed sighting of the
attackers on the mall's CCTV system was on September 22 at 00:54 hours,
12 hours after the start of the attack.
It took Kenya almost four
days to declare the mall safe. The day before doing so, Kenyan forces
started a fire and collapsed a large part of the mall, the report said.
"It
is unknown if the terrorists were killed or escaped the mall. A major
contributing factor to this uncertainty was the failure to maintain a
secure perimeter around the mall," it said.
The New York conclusions are based on information obtained by its police officers and unclassified open source information.
Interpol
is assisting Kenya in trying to identify four bodies suspected of being
those of the gunmen. No identification has yet been announced.
The
New York report also highlighted poor coordination between the Kenyan
police and the army, which saw troops kill one police officer and wound
the commander of a police team.
Most of the victims were probably
killed in the first hour of the attack when the gunmen engaged in
"wholesale killing" of those trying to hide in places like storerooms,
the report said.
According to witnesses and CCTV footage, the gunmen did not want to take hostages, only kill a broad spectrum of people.
The
New York police report also confirmed a "conscious but erratic attempt"
at avoiding Muslim casualties but voiced fears over the possibility of
future copycat attacks.
At least one attacker asked some of the
victims if they were Muslim, if they answered yes they were asked the
name of the Prophet Mohammed's mother. If they didn't know, they were
shot.
"It also clearly illustrates that armed assaults by
terrorists on 'soft' targets such as a shopping mall are a simple,
effective and easy to copy tactic," the report said.
Shebab said
the attack was a warning to Kenya to pull its troops out of southern
Somalia, where they are fighting the extremists as part of an African
Union force.
Western officials suggest as many as 94 could have
died in the attack, with some victims potentially remaining under tons
of rubble after part of the mall's roof collapsed.
The four attackers are understood to have trained in Somalia.
In Kenya, four ethnic Somalis are due in court next week over the massacre, charged with supporting a terrorist group.
They also face charges of entering Kenya illegally and obtaining false identification documents.