Al-Shabaab has killed at least 30 people at a shopping mall in Nairobi.
Somalia’s militant group al-Shabaab is claiming responsibility for the attack on a Nairobi mall on Saturday that has killed at least 30 people, saying it was retribution for Kenyan forces’ 2011 push into Somalia. The group threatened more attacks.
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Al-Shabaab, on its Twitter feed, said that it has many times warned Kenya‘s government that failure to remove its forces from Somalia “would have severe consequences”. The group claimed that its gunmen had killed 100 people, but its claims are frequently exaggerated.
“The attack at #WestgateMall is just a very tiny fraction of what Muslims in Somalia experience at the hands of Kenyan invaders,” al-Shabaab said. Another tweet said: “For long we have waged war against the Kenyans in our land, now it’s time to shift the battleground and take the war to their land #Westgate.”
They were nice about it though. They did their best to exempt Muslims.
The gunmen told hostages that non-Muslims would be targeted, said Elijah Kamau, who was at the mall at the time of the midday attack.
“The gunmen told Muslims to stand up and leave. They were safe, and non-Muslims would be targeted,” he said.
Thoughtful.