Survivors and relatives of the victims attend the Westgate attack memorial service.

AFP/Nairobi

 

Thousands of mourners gathered in Kenya’s capital yesterday for emotional commemorations marking a year since Somali Islamist gunmen attacked Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall and massacred at least 67 people.

The east African nation is on high alert for the anniversary, which comes just weeks after the Shebaab’s reclusive leader and the alleged mastermind of the attack, Ahmed Abdi Godane, was killed in a US air strike in southern Somalia.

In Nairobi’s Karura forest, close to 2,500 people – many of them survivors or bereaved families – were holding inter-faith prayers and a memorial procession.

A memorial stone with a plaque bearing the names of those confirmed dead was also unveiled.

“My life is completely shattered, it’s been very hard to cope,” said 62-year-old Amul Shah, whose son was among those cut down when a small group of the Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters walked into the upmarket mall, tossing grenades and raking shoppers and staff with machine gun fire.

Shah said that his 38-year-old son was looking after children taking part in a cooking competition on the mall’s rooftop when the attackers struck.

“He helped several children escape from the attack, but he was not lucky himself. He was so selfless.”

Fred Bosire, a former shop salesman who was shot in the legs and played dead to survive, said that he had yet to recover physically or emotionally, with the additional burden of having lost his job.

“I was shot several times on my left leg and pretended to be dead, fearing the worst. The attackers would go and come back. So, I lay there next to dead bodies for more than nine hours before I was rescued,” he said.

“Life has never been the same. That attack disrupted everything. I lost my job and now I have to depend on my wife, a casual labourer. It’s tough,” he told AFP after laying a wreath at the memorial.

Relatives of the victims will also lay wreaths of flowers at a garden in the forest where 67 tree seedlings were planted last year.

Commemorations were also held outside the boarded-up mall, and were to end later in the day with a candlelight concert at the National Museum, the venue of a memorial exhibition that opened this week.

All four gunmen were believed to have died in the mall, their bodies burned and crushed by tonnes of rubble after a section of the complex collapsed following a fierce blaze started by the fighting.

The Sunday Nation newspaper named the four as Hassan Abdi Mohamed Dhuhulow, a Norwegian national of Somali origin, Somali national Mohamed Abdi Nur Said, and Ahmed Hassan Abukar and Yahye Osman Ahmed, both Somali refugees.

The four were all aged between 19 and 23.

Apparently inspired by the Mumbai attack of 2008, the gunmen hunted down shoppers in supermarket aisles and singled out non-Muslims for execution.

They then fought it out with Kenyan security forces before the siege was finally declared over four days after the first shot was fired.

The Shebaab said that the attack was revenge for Kenya’s sending of troops to fight the extremists in Somalia as part of an African Union (AU) force.

They have launched a string of subsequent attacks in Kenya, including a wave of massacres in the coastal region, which has badly affected the country’s key tourist industry.

The head of the Kenyan Red Cross, Abbas Gullet, said that it was a time for Kenyans to unite.

“When faced with such adversity, the only thing we can do is to stand together,” he told mourners, reminding them that despite widespread criticism of the security forces – who were accused of incompetence and even looting shops – they were police and soldiers who lost their lives.

In an editorial published by the Sunday Nation, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta also vowed the country would not give in to the Shebaab.

“We have pushed with greater resolve to defeat terrorists and criminals who target innocent people living in Kenya.

“We have maintained our focus in Somalia, where our defence forces continue to incur heroic sacrifices to defeat terrorists and their sponsors,” he wrote.

On Saturday, Kenyan police chief David Kimaiyo said that security forces were on high alert for the anniversary.

“We are prepared in case of anything. Specialised units are on the ground and we have intensified patrols during this period of the anniversary,” Kimaiyo told reporters.

 

 

 

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