This screen grab released on October 18 and taken from closed circuit television shows an armed man identified as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow by the BBC, information not confirmed by Norway’s PST intelligence agency, during the attack at the Westgate mall in Nairobi on September 21.

AFP/Reuters/Kampala

Ugandan police guarded shopping malls yesterday over fears of an attack similar to the bloody assault by Somalia’s Shebaab in neighbouring Kenya, where a Norwegian citizen was revealed as being a suspected attacker.

At least 67 people were killed in the upmarket Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi when gunmen stormed the crowded complex on September 21, firing from the hip and hurling grenades at shoppers and staff.

On Thursday, investigators found a charred skull and body parts in the wreckage of the mall apparently belonging to two people, Kenyan police said.

“Three human pieces were recovered ... we have not established if they are victims or the attackers,” a senior police officer said.

Ndung’u Gethenji, chairman of parliament’s Defence and Foreign Relations Committee, said the corpses had been pulled from under rubble on Thursday in a part of the mall which had collapsed.

“All the indications are that they are the attackers,” Gethenji told Reuters. “The area they were excavating is consistent with the area (the gunmen) were trapped in during the operation.”

The Kenya Red Cross lists 23 people as missing a month after the siege.

Automatic AK-47 rifles of a model not used by Kenyan security forces and a rocket-propelled grenade were found close to the two bodies, said Gethenji, who is co-chairing the parliamentary investigation into possible intelligence failures.

“Personally I don’t have conclusive information as to how many attackers’ bodies we are expecting to look for,” he added.

Chilling CCTV footage from the first day of the four day stand-off with Kenyan security forces shows four gunmen calmly shooting panicked shoppers as others hide behind pillars or scramble along the floor towards exits.

At one point, a gunman walks up to a wounded man bleeding heavily as he tries to pull himself to safety and shoots him at close range, apparently killing him. The attackers are also seen taking turns to pray in what looks to be a store room.

Echoing investigators, Gethenji said it was still unclear if more gunmen apart from the four seen in the CCTV footage had been involved in the attack.

The corpses of the two suspected gunmen will now be subjected to detailed forensic investigations, he added.

In the absence of confirmed identities of the gunmen seen in the CCTV footage, investigators have been referring to them as “pink shirt”, “white shirt”, “black shirt” and “blue shirt”.

Fears are high the Shebaab will follow through on their threat to launch further attacks, with the Al Qaeda linked extremists this week bragging in propaganda posters at rallies in Somalia that “Westgate was just the beginning”.

“Stay alert and watch each other’s steps and activities, as we are still threatened by terror,” the Ugandan police said in a message, as armed security forces patrolled outside shopping centres in the capital Kampala.

It followed a message on Tuesday from the US embassy in Uganda which said it was continuing “to assess reports that a Westgate-style attack may soon occur in Kampala”.

The embassy said there was no further information on the timing or location of any attack.

Shebaab insurgents claimed the Westgate attack, saying that it was in revenge for Kenya military action against the group in southern Somalia.

Uganda also has troops in Somalia with the African Union force that is battling the Shebaab, and has been attacked on home soil by the extremists before, in 2010 bomb blasts that killed 76 people.

The warnings coincided with a report that a Norwegian citizen of Somali origin may have been one of the attackers who stormed the Westgate.

The 23-year-old was named by the BBC as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow.

Dhuhulow was born in Somalia, but he and his family moved to Norway as refugees in 1999, according to relatives who spoke to the BBC.

However, other relatives denied that it was Dhuhulow who appeared in security camera footage of the attack.

“None of the men in the video is the 23-year-old” a relative told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

The relative’s name or links to the suspect were not disclosed, but they reportedly live in Larvik.

The BBC quoted one of Dhuhulow’s former neighbours Morten Henriksen, who described the young man.

“He was pretty extreme, didn’t like life in Norway ... got into trouble, fights, his father was worried,” Henriksen told the BBC, speaking of Dhuhulow as a teenager.

Norway’s PST intelligence agency last week launched a probe after it obtained information about the possible involvement of a Norwegian of Somali origin in both planning and carrying out the attack.

However, yesterday it said that “at this point, we do not wish to confirm or deny this claim”.

Norwegian investigators have been sent to Nairobi to work with their Kenyan counterparts.

“It has not yet been determined whether a named Norwegian citizen actually took part in the attack or not,” the PST agency added. “Based on the information that we have uncovered this far in the investigation, however, the suspicion of his involvement has been strengthened.”

Witnesses in the mall described how the fighters stormed the complex around midday on September 21 when it was crowded with shoppers.

The gunmen coldly executed scores of people, with witnesses recounting how in some cases they called out to those wounded, then finished them off at close range.

The siege was declared over four days later.

Kenyan police have named four of the attackers as Abu Baraal al-Sudani, Khatab Ali Khane and one man known simply as Umayr – reportedly all Somalis, plus a Kenyan of Somali origin, Omar Nabhan. However, the names are noms de guerre.

Kenya’s security forces were initially praised for bravery in battling the insurgents, but were later heavily criticised after shopkeepers entering the mall after the siege said their stores had been systematically looted.

A propaganda video released this week by the Shebaab praised foreign fighters, showing several insurgents it said had come from Britain and who had been killed in battle.

The video was apparently made before the Westgate attack as it made no reference to it, although it highlights the “suffering of Muslims in Kenya” as well as other countries.

The film, narrated by a man in a military jacket, face hooded in a black mask and speaking with an apparently British accent, claims fighters from multiple nations including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Lebanon, India and Pakistan had all fought with the force.