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NEWS FLASH  // Westgate attack

Kenya: Terrorist attack on Westgate  Mall in Nairobi

Group of commando named terrorists enter in Westgate from three entries underground Parking, ground level main entry and third floor up parking, spread terror, killed people and left the scene.

On 15 September 2013 al-Shabaab militants brought mayhem to Westgate shopping center in Nairobi, executing unarmed men, women and children as they tried to hide or flee. At least 67 people were killed. Based on interviews with survivors, Media news other sources it can be concluded about the way Al shabab was acting, the reaction of Kenyan security forces and the reaction of international community.

Film of the operation:

At 12.30pm on Saturday 21 September,

Bursts of automatic fire erupted at the main entry of Westgate. A military personnel being inside Westgate and a friend in the diplomatic police were some of first people acting against the terrorist.

Kenyan Military personnel had been advised against visiting the Kenyan capital’s high-profile shopping malls, in case they were targeted by terrorists.

Four men striding towards the entrance to the mall, firing at the cars around were noticed.

The first grenade detonated. About 150 metres away at the vehicle entrance a second group of attackers had driven their car through one of the barriers, scattering the unarmed security guards. They jumped out of the vehicle and began firing and throwing grenades at passers-by.

Apparently the attack had been planned for months; a small band of jihadi fighters, perhaps as few as eight, killed at least 67 people in what became an 80-hour siege.

An off-duty British soldier and an Israeli security agent joint the other two guys to react.

A friendly-fire killing in the early hours of the siege led to the withdrawal of security services, allowing the attackers to regroup, rearm from a weapons cache inside the mall, and hunt down desperate people hiding inside.

Five minutes after the assault began in the rooftop car park at the rear of Westgate a children’s cooking competition was on the way.

Two militants were noticed coming up the vehicle ramp into the parking area. Two men were noticed throwing grenades “like maize to chickens” and shooting indiscriminately. After 20 minutes, with bodies everywhere, they went inside the mall.

12.40pm Meanwhile, in a section of the basement car park underneath the mall, the attackers set up what an intelligence source described as a "command and control centre" in an unidentified vehicle. The vehicle is thought to have been driven to the car park some time in advance of the attack.

One or more of the militants is believed to have been in mobile phone contact with the others from here, while intelligence intercepts suggest that some of the Twitter statements that al-Shabaab started to release later in the day originated from here.

12.50pm Two armed men appeared on second level. After firing several rounds they called out in English: “Muslims, get out of here!”

1.10pm Officers from Nairobi police’s flying squad arrived at the scene but initially refused to enter. Meanwhile, armed volunteers from a neighborhood watch scheme run by Kenyan-Indians in the nearby district of Parklands arrived.

Roughly 30 people but not officials were gathered to act against the attackers.

1.15pm The ground floor team said they saw at least two gunmen who were “walking not running”, picking their targets. Terrified shoppers ran into the cavernous supermarket pursued by the attackers who exchanged fire with the irregular group.

On the roof, a British man with close-cropped hair and a background in the SAS ushered the survivors through a side entrance to the third floor Java Coffee shop, from where a fire escape led to the ground floor and safety.

1.25pm Almost an hour after the assault had begun, authorities were still trying to work out what was going on.

2.30pm Witnesses on the car park roof saw at least two men, who they believe to have been attackers, changing into casual clothes near the tent where the cooking competition was judged. At this point there was no police cordon and no screening process for survivors coming out of the mall. Intelligence officials believe that at least two attackers were able to escape in the confusion.

4pm Three-and-a-half hours after the first shots were fired, Kenya’s equivalent of a Swat team, the police reconnaissance unit known as the “recce group”, arrived at the mall  along with the first army units.

 5.30pm KDF soldiers opened fire on what they thought was an armed suspect – but who was in fact one of the commanders of the recce group. The man died, and three police officers and one soldier were wounded in the exchange.

Sunday 22 September

7am Under the command of the police chief, a joint unit comprised of police and army made a first attempt to enter and take control of the ground floor of Nakumatt, where they believed the bulk of the militants were. They came under fire from a sniper on one of the upper floors and were forced to withdraw after at least two of their men were shot, one of them fatally.

9am Regular bursts of gunfire punctuated the morning, with one official saying that the operations were aimed at depleting the militants’ ammunition store.

2pm Officials estimated the number of attackers to be as many as 15, but no fewer than 10.

3pm The Kenyan police is saying they don’t need help and should be allowed to do their work.

4.50pm “White” military men, working in teams of three, were seen to enter the building carrying specialist rifles. They were later identified as Israeli commandos. The Kenyan recce group re-entered the mall, with some officers carrying rocket propelled grenade launchers. Over the next two hours two loud explosions were heard from inside.

11.28pm The KDF Twitter account announced that the siege was nearly over.

Monday 23 September

6.45am The KDF's assurances that the siege was reaching a conclusion were shattered by a huge blast that shook the entire Westlands district, followed by bursts of gunfire.

By now a command centre had been set up in the Ukay shopping centre opposite the vehicle entrance to Westgate. A British team was present in the room, including officers from the Metropolitan police’s anti-terror unit along with Israeli officials.

1.25pm Four more large blasts – the loudest during the siege – were heard from inside Westgate and a column of black smoke climbed into the sky. The fire was still smouldering a week later. Helicopters that had been hovering just over the roof the previous day began to circle higher overhead.

 Tuesday 24 September

12.30pm The first shaky amateur footage of the rear of the shopping centre emerged, showing a vast crater in the rear third of the building. The rooftop car park area where much of the worst of the carnage took place had collapsed into the floors below. Officials first claimed that the militants had set off explosives and set fire to mattresses inside Nakumatt supermarket.

That explanation was changed to say that a wire-guided anti-tank shell, an RPG-7, had been fired at one of the support pillars in an attempt to distract a sniper during an operation to rescue survivors from the mall.

 8pm Explosions and gunfire continued inside Westgate all day and was said to be coming from troops providing cover while bomb disposal teams removed booby traps.  Were found people alive and we found people dead.

10pm President Kenyatta declared “the operation is now over” in a live televised address. “

Wednesday 25 September

Aftermath

Shopkeepers and store owners returned to find their properties looted. A clothes-shop owner said even his mannequins had been stripped: “They’ve broken everything. All my money is lost over there. All the cash is lost. Everything is shattered over there, laptops gone, everything.”

A day later, footage emerged of the inside of Artcaffe showing scores of empty beer and spirit bottles littering the tables and lining the bar, where only Kenyan security forces had any access during the siege.

The owners of the second floor Millionaire’s Casino – who had emptied the safe while the siege was still officially underway – returned four days later to discover that while the premises were under government control someone had attempted to shoot their way into the safe.

After days of conflicting reports there was no longer any confidence in the authorities when they announced that the figure of 60 people missing had fallen to 39.

Two weeks later it remains unclear whether the militants ever held hostages in the conventional sense. Survivors who emerged from Westgate had been hiding from the attackers, not being held. There have been unconfirmed reports that some were tortured or mutilated during the siege, but doctors said it remains possible that the physical injuries could have been sustained by grenade fragments.

Despite the number of people missing, only three bodies have officially been recovered from the rubble of the mall. Two of those belonged to Kenyan soldiers whose remains were so badly mutilated that families had to give DNA samples to identify them.

The Kenyan government continues to insist that five attackers were killed by its security forces, but has admitted that none of their bodies has been conclusively identified so far. Forensics teams, including agents from the FBI, have found remains they believe may have belonged to at least one of the attackers, but the person has not been named.

Region in turmoil

A two-year-old Turkey-PKK ceasefire broke down last July. Since then clashes have escalated, including Turkish air force strikes against PKK bases in northern Iraq.

Turkey, the EU and US refer to the PKK as a terrorist organisation. The military has imposed curfews in parts of Kurdish-majority south-eastern Turkey.

According to the International Crisis Group, more than 340 members of Turkey's security forces have since been killed, along with at least 300 Kurdish fighters and more than 200 civilians.

Image caption The PKK operates from mountain bases in northern Iraq

Turkey v PKK - in quotes:

"What they [the PKK] are doing at the moment is trying to create a separate state in Turkey. This is outright secession.

"We are going to struggle right to the bitter end to stop this. And the Turkish people are now determined - public opinion polls say. They say, 'don't stop'." Ilnur Cevik, chief adviser to Turkey's President Erdogan.

"He [President Erdogan] wants the Kurds to surrender. If they don't surrender, he wants to kill all Kurds. He says this openly - he doesn't hide it.

"The Kurds will defend themselves to the end, so long as this is the Turkish approach - of course the PKK will escalate the war. Not only in Kurdistan, but in the rest of Turkey as well." PKK leader Cemil Bayik.

Turkey country profile

Profile: Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)

Speaking in northern Iraq, Mr Bayik said the struggle for Kurdish rights "can only be resolved through negotiations" - but the PKK would only negotiate "if the Turkish state gives up its genocidal politics".

The PKK's political leader Abdullah Ocalan was jailed by Turkey in 1999. Mr Bayik said Turkey must improve Mr Ocalan's prison conditions before any ceasefire talks could take place.

"For over a year there have been no visits to him, there is no information on or from him. There cannot be any negotiations under these circumstances."

Mr Bayik said "there is no concrete contact at the moment" with the Turkish authorities. "There have been calls made to us. Letters have been sent to us to stop the war and we answered them," he said, refusing to specify who had approached the PKK.

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Media captionThe human cost of the PKK conflict in Turkey

Ankara bombings

An offshoot of the PKK called TAK (Kurdistan Freedom Hawks) said it carried out a bomb attack last month that killed 37 people in a busy commercial district of the capital Ankara.

TAK called it retaliation for Turkey's military crackdown in the mainly Kurdish city of Cizre. TAK also said it carried out a suicide bombing against a military convoy in Ankara in February that killed 28 people.

When asked about those bombings, Mr Bayik said they were "nothing to do with the PKK - TAK carries out these actions".

"TAK is another organisation - we don't know who belongs to it."

The Turkish government has condemned not only the PKK but also the Kurdish HDP (People's Democratic Party), which won 59 seats in the 550-seat Turkish parliament in November.

Mr Erdogan accuses the HDP of supporting the PKK.

The PKK launched an armed struggle against the Turkish state in 1984, in a push for Kurdish independence. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Mr Cevik said that "once... the PKK has been driven out, then Turkey is going to start talking not to the PKK or HDP or whatever, but to Kurdish opinion leaders, serious people".

The lull in fighting before last July had been used by the PKK to boost its presence in south-eastern Turkey, he alleged. "They took us for a ride, they took Erdogan for a ride... he had no idea he was going to be double-crossed like this."