DEVELOPMENTS
• Investigation continues: Working near bodies crushed by rubble in a bullet-scarred mall, FBI agents began fingerprint, DNA and ballistic analysis Wednesday to help determine the identities and nationalities of victims and al-Shabab gunmen who attacked the shopping center, killing more than 60 people. A gaping hole in the mall's roof was caused by Kenyan soldiers who fired rocket-propelled grenades inside, knocking out a support column, a government official said. The official said the soldiers fired to distract a terrorist sniper so hostages could be evacuated. The current death toll is 67 and is likely to climb with uncounted bodies remaining in the mall. Another 175 people were injured, including more than 60 who remain hospitalized. At least 18 foreigners were among those killed.
• Some malls assess security: Some malls around the world have been scrambling to add security guards to look for suspicious people following the deadly attack on the mall in Nairobi. But for other malls, it's been business as usual. Security efforts in the mall shopping industry vary from unarmed guards in the U.S. to metal detectors and bag searches in places like Israel to main entrances that resemble airport security lines in India. In the U.S., the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group of shopping centers representing about one third of retail space globally, said the U.S. government's Department of Homeland Security is reaching out to corporate security at all malls. At the same time, the group said some of the malls in the U.S. and South Africa are beefing up private security personnel, while others are bringing in more off duty police officers. Mall of America, the biggest U.S. mall, said it added extra uniformed security officers and stepped up other measures.
As al-Qaida-linked terrorists threw grenades and fired automatic weapons, the three plainclothes Kenyan police officers, lightly armed and wearing no bulletproof vests, helmets or other protective gear, led a group of frightened shoppers to the safety of Nairobi’s Westgate Mall roof.
“I will be forever grateful for those three brave and selfless Kenyans,” said Lyndsay Handler, an American who was among those rescued from the roof in the first hours of the siege that began Saturday. “Words cannot fully capture the depth of this gratitude, but anyone who has come close to losing a child or spouse can understand.”
Undercover police officers armed only with pistols and walkie-talkies like those who rescued Handler and her husband and 2-year-old daughter helped save countless lives in the initial minutes of the attack — heroics the New York native and others they brought to safety say have gotten too little attention.
Handler was in the shopping complex with her husband, Nick, and their 2-year-old, Julia. Father and daughter were at the popular eatery, Artcaffe, when about a dozen al-Shabab militants descended on the upscale mall popular with foreigners and wealthy Kenyans and began firing indiscriminately.
Lyndsay, upstairs at a bookstore, headed to the roof, while Nick took shelter with Julia in a ground-floor storeroom of the mall’s flagship department store, Nakumatt.
Father and daughter huddled fearfully for three hours until plainclothes police came to their rescue.
“It’s hard to describe the relief I felt when I saw the doors to the storeroom open, and several incredibly brave plainclothes police, weapons drawn, motioned for us to leave as quickly as possible,” said Nick Handler, of the Philadelphia suburb of Merion, Pa.
“Perhaps it was not rational, but I instantly trusted these guys with our lives. I felt a surge of hope that we were going to be fine.”
The 31-year-old Handler, who works on agricultural issues in western Kenya, said the officers rushed into the attack zone “knowing that they were up against heavily armed gunmen and were putting their own lives on the line.”
Video from inside the mall shows how security personnel worked to save lives. In one, a man thought to be a plainclothes police officer was seen scooting on his belly across the shopping center’s ground floor to coax a mother and her two children lying next to a cafe counter to stand up and rush out.
The regular mall security guards were unarmed and powerless to stop attackers armed with semi-automatic weapons.
The al-Shabab gunmen appeared to specifically target the unarmed guards as they began their attack, said Ben Mulwa, a community organizer who was shot in the leg near one of the mall entrances. One of the guards was shot through the head just feet from where Mulwa was hiding.
He said the first responders — particularly the lightly armed officers who were among the first on the scene — displayed immense courage in a chaotic and uncertain situation.
“They’re only holding pistols. … The other guys are walking with machine guns,” he said. “They could have easily shot them. I found that extremely brave.”
Individual acts of courage aside, however, Mulwa and other Kenyans questioned how prepared the country is to confront a large-scale attack. Kenya has been hit by terrorists in the past, and Western officials have warned that malls and other public spaces could be targeted.
“The fact that kind of gunfire can go on in a prime location like that … I think the response probably wasn’t as good as it could be,” Mulwa said. “There’s some lapses that need to be addressed.”
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