Somali Militants Kill 147 at Kenyan University

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, ISMA’IL KUSHKUSH and RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali militants burst into a university in eastern Kenya on Thursday and killed nearly 150 students in the worst terrorist attack since the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy here, laying bare the nation’s continuing vulnerability after years of battling Islamist extremism.

A small group of militants, most likely between four and 10, roved from dorm to dorm, separating Christian from Muslim students and killing the Christians, the authorities said. Students described being awakened before dawn by the sound of gunfire and fleeing for their lives as masked attackers closed in.

Officials said that by the time Kenyan commandos cornered and killed the attackers on an upper floor, 147 people lay dead.

Despite new security laws, significant Western help and a heightened state of vigilance that has already put police officers on almost every major street corner in the capital, Nairobi, Kenya remains squarely in the cross hairs of the Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday.

The Shabab has killed hundreds of Kenyans — on country buses, in churches, in remote coastal towns and inside one of Kenya’s fanciest malls during a devastating siege in 2013 that left 67 people dead and rattled Kenya’s prized image as a cornerstone of stability in this part of Africa. The Kenyan government is so desperate to stop the Shabab, one of the most violent franchises of Al Qaeda, that some officials have even proposed building a 424-mile wall across the entire Somali border.

Kenya’s tourist industry, one of the pillars of its economy, has been badly damaged by the terrorist attacks, and the bloodshed on Thursday is sure to make things worse. There are also fears that the Shabab’s relentless emphasis on singling out Christians could inflame religious strife in a country already wrestling with tensions between a Muslim minority, which has complained about government persecution, and a Christian majority that increasingly feels under attack.

The violence Thursday came just days after President Obama announced that he would visit Kenya in July, his first trip to his father’s homeland since taking office. Mr. Obama had stayed away until now, at least in part out of concerns about Kenya’s public safety.

The White House issued a statement condemning the attack and vowing to continue assisting Kenya in fighting the Shabab — in recent months, the American military has killed the group’s leader and other operatives — but it offered no indication of whether the university siege would change Mr. Obama’s travel plans.

The Kenyan authorities said that around dawn, the attackers stormed Garissa University College in the town of Garissa, about 90 miles from the Somali border. Though the college is in a predominantly ethnic Somali area of Kenya, it attracts students from across the country, many of them non-Muslim.

In a statement early on Thursday, the Shabab said that its fighters had attacked the university early in the morning, separating Muslims from non-Muslims in an “operation against the infidels.”

In an audio message soon after, a Shabab spokesman, Ali Mohamoud Raghe, said the attack had been carried out because “the Christian government of Kenya has invaded our country,” a reference to the Kenyan military’s 2011 incursion into Somalia to oust the Shabab from its strongholds.

He said the university had been targeted because it was educating many Christian students in “a Muslim land under colony,” a reference to the large Somali population in a part of Kenya that Somalia once tried to claim. He called the university part of Kenya’s “plan to spread their Christianity and infidelity.”

President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed to crack down on terrorists, and on Thursday, he abruptly ordered 10,000 police recruits to report to duty despite a court order saying the recruits may have been selected through corrupt practices. Human rights observers have said that Mr. Kenyatta is trying to consolidate control and using the fear of terrorism to quash civil rights.

On Thursday, panicked students streamed out of the besieged university with chilling stories of witnessing their classmates’ being killed. Augustine Alanga, 21, an economics student, said he had been asleep in his dormitory when the shooting began. He said he bolted from his room without stopping to put on his shoes, cutting his feet as he sprinted barefoot across the campus and into a nearby forest.

“When I looked back, I saw them,” Mr. Alanga recalled. “There were five or six of them. They were masked. And they were shooting live rounds.”

The authorities said the attack began when the gunmen killed two guards standing by the main gate of the university.

Police officers nearby “heard the gunshots and responded swiftly, and engaged the gunmen in a fierce shootout; however, the attackers retreated and gained entry into the hostels,” a police statement said. “Security agencies arrived and are currently engaged in an elaborate process of flushing out the gunmen.”

The police surrounded and sealed off the campus, and by 11 a.m., three of the college’s four student dormitories had been evacuated, while “the attackers have been cornered in one hostel,” the Interior Ministry said on Twitter. It was unclear whether any bystanders had been killed by the security forces.

Kenya’s struggles with the Shabab have been going on for years. In late 2011, citing a string of attacks and kidnappings, the Kenyan military charged across the border into Somalia, sending troops, tanks and aircraft to fight the Shabab.

問「你是穆斯林還基督徒？」肯亞恐攻147死

伊斯蘭激進組織「青年黨」四名成員2日闖入肯亞東北部城市加里薩一所大學的宿舍開槍濫殺，一度挾持人質與軍警對峙，最後引爆炸彈背心，結束將近16小時的血腥行動，至少造成147人死、79人傷；這是肯亞20多年來最慘重的恐怖攻擊。

蒙面的青年黨槍手2日清晨5時半闖進加里薩大學學院宿舍，專挑基督徒或皈依伊斯蘭的人開槍或綁架；當時正是穆斯林晨禱時間，

該所大學有六棟宿舍，住宿學生超過880人；加里薩大學距索馬利亞邊界約90哩（144公里），而青年黨的大本營是索馬利亞。

學生會副會長渥坦古拉說，當時他正準備洗澡，聽到150公尺外的另一棟宿舍傳出槍聲，便立刻反鎖房門；他聽到凶手逐間打開房門，問躲在裡面的學生是穆斯林還是基督徒，「如果你說是基督徒，當場就被殺掉。」

其他學生說，槍手把基督徒和穆斯林分開，並在一間宿舍劫持人質，基督徒人質的周圍堆滿炸藥。

肯亞內政部長表示，一些學生死在參加晨禱的清真寺。

學生表示，凶手也殺害可能皈依伊斯蘭的人；當地人可區別一出生就是穆斯林的信徒和後來才皈依者，因為後者來自不同族群。

官員表示，絕大多數死者為學生，但有兩名警衛、一名警員和一名士兵也遇難；一名極端分子企圖逃走時被捕。

加里薩和三個鄰近郡縣，從3日到16日將實施宵禁。

肯亞警方懸賞22萬元，以逮捕他們稱策劃此次攻擊的首腦默哈穆德；安全官員上周提出的情報報告警告，青年黨計畫對重要機構發動攻擊，以報復肯亞參加「非洲聯盟」圍剿青年黨的計畫，在索馬利亞採取軍事行動。

2日血案是1998年奈洛比的美國駐肯亞大使館爆炸造成224人喪生以來，肯亞死傷最慘重的恐怖攻擊。

青年黨上月27日攻擊索馬利亞首都摩加迪休一家飯店，殺害18人，和索國安全部隊對峙逾12小時，青年黨成員亦有六人死亡。

青年黨另於2013年9月攻擊奈洛比購物商場，挾持人質和政府軍對峙四天，造成67人喪生。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/world/africa/garissa-university-college-shooting-in-kenya.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/world/20150403/c03attack/zh-hant/

2015-04-03．聯合晚報．A4．國際．國際新聞組