Attackers’ bodies displayed in Kenyan town
GARISSA, Kenya — Hundreds of residents of this eastern city turned out in the traffic-clogged streets on Saturday to view the bodies of four men suspected of carrying out the bloody campus assault here as Somali militants issued a statement threatening Kenya with more attacks.
“I want to see them,” Muna Haji said. “I want to know that these people are dead. They have killed innocent people.”
The four naked bodies were loaded haphazardly into the back of the pickup truck at the morgue where they had been held since morning. Local and international forensics teams had taken their clothes as evidence.
The truck paraded the bodies through town as residents ran alongside, clamoring for a glimpse, until it arrived at Garissa Primary School. There, it parked, and the bodies sat. Flies gathered on the bloated limbs hanging from the truck bed as the crowd swelled.
“Are those the real terrorists? During Westgate, we never found out whether the terrorists were really killed,” said Abdihakim Mowlio, an intern at Garissa Provincial General Hospital, referring to the deadly Westgate Mall attack in 2013, in which al-Shabab militants killed 67 people. “If they show the dead bodies, we believe that they’ve really been killed. We’ll feel safer because we’ve seen that the government has actually responded.”
As operations continued at Garissa University College, the Islamic extremists who claimed responsibility for the assault there on Thursday said the motive was “retaliation” for Kenya’s military actions in Somalia and its treatment of Muslims, according to a statement posted on al-Shabab-affiliated websites and jihadists’ Twitter accounts and published by the SITE Intelligence Group. If such actions continue, they said, there will be more attacks.
The massacre, which left 148 people dead, appeared to have been carefully planned, even targeting a site where Christians had gone to pray, survivors said on Friday.
More than 500 students were rescued after the militants, heavily armed and strapped with explosives, attacked the campus, shooting some people and taking others hostage. At least 79 people were injured, according to Kenya’s National Disaster Operation Center.
Meanwhile, in Eastleigh, Nairobi’s predominantly Somali suburb, people steeled themselves for what they expect to be inevitable retaliation from Kenyan security forces. Residents said attacks such as the Garissa massacre usually result in the targeting of Kenya’s entire Somali community.
Mohamed Amin, a former member of parliament in Somalia, said that this, in turn, angers Somali youths in Kenya, driving them toward al-Shabab. “Al-Shabab’s tactic is to divide the community,” he said. If the security forces do not change course and “make friends” with the Muslim community, he said, “then many more al-Shabab supporters will come out. That’s why Kenyans should change the culture of harassment. They should take Somali civilians as their own civilians, not their enemies.”
At the main gate of Garissa University College on Friday evening, Muslims expressed sorrow over the killings. One group of young women had walked from their homes two hours away to see for themselves what had happened.
“Why is this happening in our country?” asked a Muslim high-school student from a nearby village who gave her name as Najma. “Why are the terrorists killing people?”
Also on Friday, Somali President Hassan Sheik Mohamud called for strengthened cooperation between Kenyan and Somali security forces to combat Islamist militants, according to the BBC. He called the attack a “barbaric act.”