Photos from the scene of Kenyan hotel terrorist attack as survivors continue to beg for aids to come to their rescue.
15 people were killed when Islamist terrorists launched an attack on a luxury hotel in Kenya yesterday.
The terrorists fired shots as they barged into DusitD2 hotel complex
in Nairobi on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 15, 2019. They were
armed with bombs and guns.
Trapped civilians were seen escaping through a window at the hotel.
Those who couldn’t escape sent messages out begging for medical help. At
the scene, there was blood, shattered glass and bodies slumped over
chairs.
The death toll is reported to be at 14. Eleven Kenyans, an American
and a Briton were among the casualties, morgue staff said. Tje victims
had not been identified.
It is feared that the death toll will rise once it is safe to go into the hotel.
Kenyan authorities said yesterday that the situation had been brought
under control and the scene secured. But first responders say gunshots
were still heard at 4am (GMT) today. Blasts and shots had punctuated the
night, making it hard to rescue scores of people trapped inside.
Al-Shabab, the Somalia-based group that carried out the 2013 Westgate
Mall attack in Nairobi that left 67 people dead, claimed responsibility
for yesterday’s bloodshed.
Police said:
The area around 14 Riverside Drive is a Crime Scene … under an active security operation.
CCTV footage captured the armed gunmen moving through the complex
with military precision, looking for victims. They then went from office
to office shooting randomly.
In panic, people took cover wherever they could — behind cars, in offices or inside bathrooms. Robert Murire said it was chaos.
He said:
When those guys came in, they just started shooting. They were not
normal people. Just they were three people. They had green trousers,
green tops, they had something here and bullets, black bullets.
Many of the victims had been dining in the Secret Garden restaurant and lay slumped at their tables.
Families who had gone to the Chiromo morgue seeking loved ones were
told they could not view the bodies until a forensic investigation had
been performed, provoking grief and anger.
One man who only gave his name as David said he had yet to hear from a relative in the hotel complex.
He told Reuters at the morgue:
I have been trying to reach him since yesterday when the incident
happened … I spoke to him when the incident started around 3.30, when
they started shooting … his phone went off around 4 pm.
The family of one 35-year-old man collapsed in the courtyard when
they heard that a body had arrived with his identification papers.
The co-ordinated attack began with an explosion that targeted three
vehicles outside a bank, and a suicide bombing in the hotel lobby that
severely wounded a number of guests, said Kenya’s national police chief,
Joseph Boinnet.
Survivors reported hearing a shattering blast and saw people mowed
down by gunmen as they sat at a cafe. Victims were left lying on tables,
bleeding.
Enoch Kibet, who works as a cleaner at the cafe and managed to crawl out a basement gate, said;
We were changing our shifts, and that is when I heard a loud blast and people were screaming.
I couldn’t believe I was alive. The blast was so loud and shook the whole complex.
Kenyan hospitals appealed for blood donations even as the number of wounded remained unclear.
