collective pictures and details on the whole Shabaab attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall on September 21 2013

Pictures of the Westgate Mall Al shabaab terror attack.

Here are some photos taken during a rescue operation at Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Courtesy of The Daily Nation

Security officers secure an area inside Westgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi

An injured policeman is evacuated by his colleagues on September 21, 2013 after he was shot during a security operation at an upmarket shopping mall in Nairobi where suspected terrorrists engaged Kenyan security forces in a drawn out gun fight

Civilians rescued at the Westgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi

This plain clothes police officer is seen rescuing a child and some women at the Westgate shopping mall in Westlands

Children stand next to a body on laying on stairs at the Westgate Shopping mall in Nairobi

Armed police search Westgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi

Armed police search through Westgate shopping centre for gunmen in Nairobi

An injured policeman holds on to his wound as his compatriot searches through the Westgate shopping centre for gunmen in Nairobi,

A child runs to safety as armed police hunt gunmen who went on a shooting spree at Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi

 

What The Deadly Attack On A Kenya Mall Was Really About

The bloody Shabaab attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall on September 21 was an act of desperation by a jihadi group beset by internal power struggles and plummeting support. It is intended to provoke a violent backlash against ethnic Somalis by the Kenyan government and Kenyan citizens. Angry and frustrated Kenyans must resist the urge to play into Shabaab’s hands.
Ever since Shabaab’s ascent to power in 2007, security and country experts have worried about the possibility that Shabaab – which has long had a network in Kenya – would attack one of Kenya’s many soft targets. Nairobi’s busy shopping malls have always been a top concern. In addition to the loss of life, such a terrorist attack would have enormous ripple effects, costing Kenya hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tourist and business dollars.
Yet for six years, the jihadi group opted only for a series of relatively small-scale attacks in Kenya, most of which appear to have been free-lance actions inspired by, rather than directly launched by, Shabaab. What was constraining Shabaab, even at the height of its power and popularity in Somalia in 2007-08, from taking the war to Kenya?
The answer, we surmised, was that Shabaab did not want to disrupt the interests of hundreds of thousands of Somalis living and investing in Kenya. Since the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, over a million Somalis have fled to and through Kenya, and many now have extensive business and real estate investments there. For all of the deep tensions between Somalis and Kenyans, Somalis are major stakeholders in Kenya today. Were Shabaab to launch a large-scale terrorist attack in Kenya, the argument went, it would risk provoking a heavy Kenyan crackdown on all of those Somali businesses. That in turn would provoke a backlash by Somalis against Shabaab. At that point, Shabaab would not have to worry about what the Kenyan or US governments would do to them — they’d have to worry about what fellow Somalis would do to them. Messing with Somali business interests has never advanced the interests of any political actor in Somalia, foreign or local.
But the argument went further than this. Many of us also warned that Shabaab’s reluctance to attack soft targets in Kenya (or elsewhere, including in the US) was contingent on the group’s continued success in Somalia. Were the group to weaken and fragment, it would be more likely to consider high-risk terrorism abroad. Paradoxically, a weakened Shabaab is a greater threat outside Somalia than a stronger Shabaab.
And make no mistake – Shabaab is weakened. It is still one of the strongest armed groups in south-central Somalia, and still capable of daily assassinations and terrorist attacks in Mogadishu, but it is in a state of serious decline. Over the past two years, it has lost control of almost all urban areas and the lucrative revenues from seaports like Kismayo. Its deep internal divisions exploded in armed conflict this year, resulting in the deaths of several of its top leaders and the splintering of the group. Most foreign mujahedeen have become disillusioned and left Somalia. And, most importantly, far fewer Somalis, both in country and in the large Somali diaspora, actively support the group.
The Westgate attack is the latest sign of the group’s weakness. It was a desperate, high-risk gamble by Shabaab to reverse its prospects. If the deadly attack succeeds in prompting vigilante violence by Kenyan citizens or heavy-handed government reactions against Somali residents, Shabaab stands a chance of recasting itself as the vanguard militia protecting Somalis against external enemies. It desperately needs to reframe the conflict in Somalia as Somalis versus the foreigners, not as Somalis who seek peace and a return to normalcy versus a toxic jihadi movement.
Those who argue that this was a bid by Shabaab to demonstrate its continued relevance to Al Qaeda are mistaken. Shabaab’s gratuitous violence against civilians has long been a source of friction with Al Qaeda, whose leaders have been appalled at Shabaab’s counter-productive tactics. An attack on a shopping center filled with civilians of all religions and nationalities only damages further Al Qaeda’s “brand name” and is likely to widen further the gap between Al Qaeda and Shabaab leadership. The fact that Shabaab is too violent for Al Qaeda says a lot about how extreme this group has become.
The Kenyan people and government now control the next move. If they respond to this terrible tragedy with restraint and respect for due process and rule of law, they will do more to undermine Shabaab than all of the counter-terrorism operations conducted inside Somalia.
Kenya and Kenyans are not the only players who have the next move. Somalis – in Kenya, in Somalia, and in the diaspora – also face an unavoidable and immediate choice. Either they can mobilize against Shabaab and take the movement out once and for all – by drying up its financial sources, exposing its operatives, and denying the movement any safe space from which to operate – or they can sit on their hands and make vague calls for a negotiated settlement, as they have done for years. Somalia desperately needs a “Sunni uprising” against the hard-core extremists who now make up what is left of Shabaab. If Somalis refuse to act decisively against Shabaab, then it will be up to foreign governments to crush the group. But this will entail crackdowns that will almost certainly impact innocent Somalis and legitimate Somali businesses in Kenya and around the world, and that is not in anyone’s interest except Shabaab’s.
This is ultimately a Somali problem, and requires a Somali solution that is swift and unequivocal. If that happens, the terrible attack of September 21 will go down as the day Shabaab dug its own grave.

Samantha Lewthwaite, White Widow, leading attacks in westgate nairobi

There are unconfirmed reports that an infamous female jihadist, Samantha Lewthwaite, a.k.a White Widow is the mastermind of the Westgate mall attacks in Nairobi, Kenya.

This is what Samantha Lewthwaite said moments before the attack- “So maybe ­tomorrow it will be ­Jannah [paradise], I look around at how beautiful Jihad is, it’s alive in Kenya, it’s alive in me, and I’m breathing Jihad, it’s my time.”
According to CIA and Mossad Samantha Lewthwaite is responsible for the death of police officers in the mall, she has previously managed to escape all police traps inside kenya and outside. The  US government had offered 5 $ million for her capture (DOA).

Nairobi Westgate attack: The victims

 

 

At least 62 people are known to have died since al-Shabab militants attacked the Westgate shopping centre in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Saturday. The siege continues.

This page showing what we know about the victims will be updated as new information comes to light.

Kenya

Ruhila Adatia-Sood

Ruhila Adatia-Sood and her husband were married in January last year

Ruhila Adatia-Sood, a popular TV and radio personality, was in the rooftop car park of the Westgate shopping centre where she was part of a team hosting a cooking competition for children at the time of the attack.

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Food lover, thrill seeker and a bungee jump away from sanity”

Ruhila Adatia-Sood on Twitter

She was married to Ketan Sood, who worked for USAid in Nairobi, in January 2012 in what has been described as Swahili-themed wedding.

She was six months' pregnant with their first child when she died.
According to reports, Ms Adatia-Sood was rushed to Aga Khan Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.
She was "known throughout Kenya for her passion, vibrancy, and gift for making people smile", USAid administrator Rajiv Shah said in a statement.
On her Twitter account, she described herself as a "food lover, thrill seeker and a bungee jump away from sanity".
A graduate of South Africa's Rhodes University in Grahamstown, her three elder sisters described her as "a go-getter since childhood".
She was a presenter on Radio Africa media group's East FM and said she hosted entertainment news on Kiss TV, E-News, Kiss 100 and X-FM.
On Saturday she was tweeting Instagram photos of those attending the cooking competition in the car park.
Her colleague, Kamal Kaur, also a radio presenter, was helping with the competition and was at the event with her two young children when she said they all came under attack from a gunman.
"A grenade was thrown at us and it went off. At the same time he shot at us. The bullet missed my son by just an inch; it bounced off the wall and hit the boy who was next to him," she told the BBC.
"Then he [the attacker] came out again with his big rifle. My daughter kept whispering to everybody: 'Pretend you're dead! Pretend you're dead! He won't shoot...pretend you're dead.'
Ms Kaur and her children managed to escape - her children were hit in their legs by shrapnel.
"My daughter is very devastated because my colleague Ruhila... she was six months pregnant and she lost her life and we're very devastated about that... Very devastated about that," Ms Kaur said.
Mbugua Mwangi and Rosemary Wahito President Uhuru Kenyatta's nephew Mbugua Mwangi and his fiancee Rosemary Wahito are among the many Kenyans killed in the attack on the Westgate shopping centre.
Addressing the nation on Saturday, Uhuru Kenyatta said:
"I ask God to give you comfort as you confront this tragedy, and I know what you feel having also lost very close family members in this deadly attack."
According to the Irish Independent newspaper, Mr Mwangi's mother, Catherine Muigai Mwangi, had recently returned home from Dublin following a six-year posting as Kenya's ambassador to Ireland.
Mr Kenyatta's elder sister Christine Wambui Pratt was also at Westgate at the time of the attack, but managed to escape.
Mitul Shah

Mitul Shah ran his company's football team

A sales and marketing director of Bidco, a company that primarily makes cooking oil, Mitul Shah was also up in the rooftop car park at the cooking competition.
"He died trying to save stranded children. He died as a hero," Half Jadhe Half Kyuk wrote on the KenyaList.com message board.
He described Mitual Shah as a fervent Manchester United fan.
He was also chairman of Bidco's football team, which plays in the second division.
Peter Simani

Peter Simani was a highly respected lawyer

An aviation and communications expert and a lawyer by training, Peter Simani was meeting a friend at Westgate mall on Saturday when the militants burst in.
He and his friend both died in the attack. His friend's name is not known yet.
Peter Simani chaired the Political Parties Dispute Tribunal and was also a director of the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK).
Ngene Gituku, chairman of the CCK board, said that Kenya had lost a "brilliant lawyer with an incisive and highly analytical mind".
"My board highly relied on Mr Simani's guidance on delicate decisions on legal issues, especially those touching on the regulation of the fast-growing ICT sector," he said in a statement.
Rajan Solanki The 24-year-old food entrepreneur died on Saturday. It is likely he was at the food competition taking place in the rooftop car park.
He founded the food website Pika Chakula, which means "cook food" in KiSwahili, with a mission to "teach people how to cook".

Rajan Solanki was passionate about good food

"A very smart gentle man who enjoyed the simple things in life, outgoing and never learnt how to say no. Never had nothing against any one," said a post on a Facebook page set up to remember him.
His funeral was held on Monday at the Hindu Crematorium in Nairobi.
"To all our Pika Chakula fans. This week we will be posting Rajan Solanki's favourite dishes and recipes," the website tweeted on Tuesday.
Neha Mashru

A student at the private Oshawal Academy near Westgate shopping centre, she died on Saturday during the shoot-out.
"Head girl, dancer, awesome friend," a Facebook community set up to remember her says.
"A girl who you could talk to about anything," the post continues.
Vaya sisters-in-law

Joyti Kharmes Vaya was a 37-year-old mother of three whose husband worked for Victoria Commercial bank, it said.
Maltiben Ramesh Vaya was aged 41, a mother of two who worked for the Bank of Baroda.
"Both daughters-in-law succumbed to injuries related to gunshot wounds in yesterday's terror attack in Nairobi's Westgate Mall," a message on Facebook posted by a Pattni Brotherhood community in Nairobi said.
Other Kenyans

A paper with funeral arrangements for Salima Ayaz Merali and her daughter

The chief executive of Paramount Bank, Ayaz Merali, lost his wife Salima Ayaz Merali and daughter Nuriannu Ayaz Merali.
Anuj Shah, who ran the Sona Shoppe, a photography studio on ground floor of the mall, also died during the attack.
Nehal Vekaria, a 16-year-old student. On Sunday, her family held her funeral where she was cremated.

Nehal Vekaria, a 16-year-old student, has been cremated

UK

Six Britons are among those killed. None has been formally identified, but they are believed to include Ross Langdon, who had dual Australian and British nationality (see below), and the daughter of Louis Bawa.
Jennah Bawa, eight, had been on a shopping trip with her Kenyan-born mother, Zahira Bawa, on Saturday in Westgate. It is not clear if Zahira has been counted as one of the dead Britons.

Louis Bawa spent agonising hours outside the mall for news of his wife and daughter (pictured right)

The family lived in Leamington Spa until last year, when lawyer Mrs Bawa is reported to have returned to Kenya to look after her mother. Mr Bawa then took a job as the chief executive of a marketing company in Dubai and began travelling to see his family in Nairobi at weekends.
"The last time I spoke to them was on Friday evening, I didn't get a chance to catch up with them on Saturday morning. They were going to Westgate to do what they always did, grocery shopping. This time they didn't come home," Mr Bawa told the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper.
"Zahira and Jennah were Muslims, but these animals just shot them the same as all of the others," he told the paper.
Mr Bawa had spent agonising hours outside the shopping mall, hoping to hear from them. He found out on Sunday night that they were among the dead, identifying them from photographs taken of victims inside the shopping centre.

Australia and Holland

Ross Langdon, an Australian architect who grew up in Tasmania and had dual British nationality, died in the shootout along with his Dutch girlfriend Elif Yavuz, a 33-year-old health worker and Harvard graduate.
Mr Langdon co-founded Regional Associates and worked in East Africa on sustainable architecture projects.
"Profoundly talented and full of life, Ross enriched the lives of all those around him," the company said on its website.

Ross Langdon and Elif Yavuz were expecting their first child next month

"Ross's leadership on projects throughout East Africa was inspirational, and he will be will be very, very sorely missed by us all."
Peter Adams, a family friend in Tasmania, paid tribute to the couple on his blog: "There just was no dark side to Ross that I ever saw in the 20 or so years I knew him.
"We all took immense pride in both his architectural abilities and his very generous, positive, and loving personality."
Amongst his achievements was his "pro-bono" design for an Aids hospital in Kenya, Mr Adams said.
"In Uganda he designed and supervised a unique eco-village employing only local labour," he added.
Ms Yavuz, who was expecting their first child in two weeks' time, worked for the Clinton Foundation as a senior vaccines researcher based in Tanzania.
The UK's Daily Mail reports that in photographs from the mall that are too graphic to print, Mr Langdon is seen cradling Ms Yavuz, a hand draped protectively over her stomach.
The couple are believed to have travelled for the birth from Tanzania to Nairobi, because of its advanced health care facilities.
Former US President Bill Clinton and his family paid tribute to Ms Yavuz, saying she was "brilliant, dedicated and deeply admire by her colleagues".
"Elif devoted her life to helping others, particularly people in developing countries suffering from malaria and HIV/Aids," the Clinton family statement said.

Canada

Naguib Damji The 59-year-old from the Vancouver area was on a business trip to Nairobi when he was killed at Westgate, a family member has said.
According to Canada's QMI news agency, he was a hotelier and was at a coffee shop with relatives when the attack happened.
His family in Canada, including three adult daughters, found out about the tragedy through relatives who survived the attack, The Province paper in British Columbia reported.
Annemarie Desloges A 29-year-old Canadian diplomat who served at the country's high commission in Kenya as a liaison officer with the Canada Border Services Agency.
Her husband, Robert Munk, was injured in the attack but has since been released from hospital, officials said.

Ghana

Kofi Awoonor

The 78-year-old Ghanaian was a renowned poet - regarded as literary royalty at home, where his poetry and novels are considered essential reading at schools.
He was in Nairobi as a participant in the Storymoja Hay Festival and was due to perform on Saturday evening.

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A writer, politician and traditionalist with great wit, sense of humour and very well-spoken. He will be sorely missed”

John Mahama Ghana's president

• Kofi Awoonor: Remembering a Ghanaian poet

He became known for his poetry in the 1960s and was inspired by the singing and oral storytelling of his Ewe ethnic group - his first published collection was called Rediscovery.

In the 1970s he taught at several universities in the US, returning to Ghana in 1975 to take up a position as head of English at the University of Cape Coast.
Within months he was arrested and detained for a year on suspicion of treason during the military rule of Col Ignatius Acheampong.
This provoked protests from Amnesty International and writers such as the beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
He became more politically active after his incarceration, serving as Ghana's ambassador to Brazil in the 1980s, and - after the country's return to multi-party democracy - as ambassador to the UN.
Ghana's President John Mahama said he was shocked by such a sad twist of fate: "A writer, politician and traditionalist with great wit, sense of humour and very well-spoken. He will be sorely missed."
Mr Awoonor's son was with him in Nairobi and was shot in the shoulder during the attack.

India

Paramshu Jain The eight-year-old son of a branch manager for the Bank of Baroda was among those who died in the mall, Indian external ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said on Twitter.
Sudharshan B Nagaraj
From the southern city of Bangalore, Sudharshan Nagaraj had only arrived in Nairobi the day before he was killed, Mr Akbaruddin said.
He was in the book trade and was also due to travel to Kampala in neighbouring Uganda and Ghana's capital, Accra.
Sridhar Natarajan A 40-year-old was from Tamil Nadu in southern India, Sridhar Natarajan was working for a pharmaceutical firm in Nairobi, Mr Akbaruddin said.
The ministry spokesman said that the size of the Indian community and those of Indian origin in Kenya was estimated to be 70,000.

Peru

Juan Jesus Ortiz-Iruri A doctor and former deputy head of the Kenyan branch of the UN children's fund, Juan Ortiz-Iruri was at the shopping centre with his 13-year-old daughter Juanita.
The 63-year-old died at the scene, his daughter was shot in the leg and hand and required surgery but is expected to survive, his son Ricardo Ortiz told Peru's RPP radio.
He was due to take up a full-time post at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK and was expected to arrive at its Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health (CMNH) this week.

South Korea

Kang Moon-hee The 38-year-old was fatally wounded from gunshot wounds and shrapnel from a grenade, South Korean's Yonhap news agency reported.
Sources told the agency she died while being treated at a hospital on Sunday.
Her husband, a British citizen, has received surgery for a gunshot wound and is reportedly currently in stable condition.
According to AFP, the couple had only recently moved to Nairobi from Dubai.

Trinidad and Tobago

Ravindra Ramrattan Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar issued a statement extending condolences to Ravrinda Ramrattan's family. Mr Ramrattan had been working as a research analyst with the World Bank in Nairobi since September 2011, the statement added.

Other nationals

China: China's official news agency reported that a 38-year-old Chinese woman had been killed - her teenage son was injured.
France: A mother and daughter were "executed in the parking lot" of Westgate, Helene Conway-Mouret, the French minister in charge of nationals living abroad, told private French channel BFM-TV.
South Africa: One national has died at Westgate, officials said.

Authorities and militants take Nairobi battle to Twitter

 

While international attention has been drawn to the dramatic stand-off at the Westgate shopping complex in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, both Kenyan authorities and al-Shabab militants have been trying to broadcast their messages about the attack on social media.

Even before the Westgate shoot-out, al-Shabab had been trying to use English-language Twitter accounts to broadcast its message to the wider world. However, accounts thought to be used by the group had already been shut down by Twitter twice in the past nine months.
Each time, however, the account has re-appeared under a slightly different name.
During the attack on Westgate, an al-Shabab linked account began putting out messages saying the attack was in retaliation for Kenyan forces' "crimes" in Somalia and referring to "fighting the Kenyan kuffar [infidels] inside their own turf".
That account in turn was suspended and others have appeared over the course of the siege, all of them using similar language, causing confusion over which one, if any, was genuine.
Gloating On Tuesday yet another account was created, and an al-Shabab spokesman confirmed to the BBC that it was their account. As of Tuesday afternoon, it was still active.
Like the previous accounts, it has also taken to gloating over the attack and urging Kenyans to put pressure on their government to withdraw forces from Somalia.
Another reads: "You could have avoided all this and lived your lives with relative safety. Remove your forces from our country and peace will come #Westgate."

The battle for the narrative over the attack has been fought in parallel with the stand-off

The account also tweeted a photo originally posted by another, mainly Arabic-language, account affiliated to al-Shabab claiming to show two of the attackers inside the shopping complex.
This feed has managed to stay on Twitter since being set up on 1 May. It has also been giving updates during the current crisis, some of them in English.
Clearly aware of how the crisis is being covered in the international media, it refers to rumours that Samantha Lewthwaite, the British widow of one of the bombers that carried out the 7/7 attack in London in 2005, is involved in the Westgate attack, even using the "white widow" nickname given to her in the press.
Confusion Kenyan security officials have also been tweeting prolifically throughout the crisis, with police providing many announcements in the form of tweets.
The inspector general of Kenya's national police service, David Kimaiyo, announced after the crisis began on Saturday that the area was surrounded by police and appealed for the public and media organisations to stay away from the scene.
He has been giving a regular stream of updates ever since, as has the account for the Kenyan police.
However, verifiable facts about the situation inside the mall have at times been difficult to come by, with an apparent lack of co-ordination in the messages being given by different branches of government.
For example, on Monday the Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said in a US television interview that "two or three" Americans and one British woman were among the attackers.
On the same evening her cabinet colleague Joseph Ole Lenku sent a tweet stating: "All terrorists are male".
Also on Monday evening several official accounts began to suggest the crisis was drawing to a close. "We're in control of #Westgate", read one message from the interior ministry, while other accounts linked to Kenyan security forces retweeted congratulatory messages about the operation.

Kenyans have been lining up to donate blood for the victims of the attack

However, it soon became clear that the operation was in fact continuing and that not all of the attackers had been apprehended.
But arguably the most important use of social media by the authorities is to rally Kenyans behind the security forces as they respond to the attack using the hashtags #WeAreOne and #WithOneAccord, a reference to the Kenyan national anthem.
The prevailing mood among Kenyans on Twitter appears to be one of support for the operation against the militants and a feeling of solidarity in a time of crisis.
Kenyans are among the most active users of Twitter in Africa and have also been using social media in order to come together and organise initiatives to help the victims of the attack.
Many shared information about where to give blood - blogger Robert Alai shared a picture of children on roller-skates holding placards urging Kenyans to donate blood.
Others shared stories of Kenyans bringing food to journalists covering the siege and the security forces posted near the centre.