NAIROBI, Kenya—Defense forces and Kenya's president on Tuesday said the siege at an upscale shopping mall in Nairobi was over after four days, after a massive explosion collapsed three of the building's floors.
In an address to the nation on Tuesday night, President Uhuru Kenyatta said five militants had been killed and 11 suspects were in police custody.
"We have shamed and defeated our attackers," he said.
Mr. Kenyatta also mentioned unconfirmed intelligence reports that two or three Americans were involved as well as a British woman, but said an investigation into the nationalities of the attackers was continuing.
Militants entered the popular Westgate shopping mall—a popular spot for wealthy Kenyan and expatriates—and began shooting at the Saturday lunchtime crowd.
In a fierce final exchange as night fell Tuesday, Kenyan soldiers fired rocket-propelled grenades at insurgents, triggering the explosives that the al-Shabaab militants had rigged inside the building, said a group of soldiers outside the mall.
The massive blasts caused three of the mall's floors to collapse on each other. Although the structure of the building remained, the collapsed floors made survival for anyone inside unlikely, said a lieutenant in the Kenyan Defense Forces.
The lieutenant said he hadn't seen any hostages during the final stages of the operation.
"As far as we're concerned, the operation is complete," he said. "We don't expect there's anyone alive in there."
The lieutenant said it wasn't possible to see inside the building because power systems had been destroyed. Rescue operations were expected to begin Wednesday morning, he said.
Westgate Mall Siege Hour by Hour
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President Kenyatta said Tuesday that six soldiers had died in the operation to retake the mall from militants. He declared three days of national mourning after 61 civilians died in the attack.
"We have been badly hurt and feel great pain and loss," Mr. Kenyatta said. "In resolutely looking forward and never turning back we have defeated our enemies."
The Kenyan government all but declared victory overnight Monday into Tuesday, saying that they believed the remaining civilians in the mall had been freed and implying that remaining operations were mainly a cleanup. But Nairobi residents awoke Tuesday to now-familiar sounds of gunshots and helicopters circling over the mall.
A Kenyan soldier who is involved in intelligence gathering said earlier Tuesday that troops had been still encountering resistance from around two-three militants on the fourth floor of the mall.
He said most of the estimated 10-15 militants had been killed in clashes since Monday.
The Somali militant group al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the attack. It targeted Kenya, the group said, partly because of Kenyan peacekeepers fighting al-Shabaab in Somalia.
"You could have avoided all this and lived your lives with relative safety," a message from a Twitter account purported to be al-Shabaab's said on Tuesday. "Remove your forces from our country and peace will come."
Mr. Kenyatta pledged that Kenya would seek retribution for the attack, but didn't say how.
"These cowards will meet justice as well as their accomplices and patrons," he said. "The majority of people who lost their lives were innocent harmless civilians."
Kenyan troops and police maintained a heavy presence around Westgate early Tuesday. Sporadic blasts and gunshots continued to ring from the mall early in the day.
Security officials had said Kenyan troops were using explosives to blast their way onto the fourth floor, the militants' last remaining hideout.
Early Tuesday, Kenyan police had tweeted: "We have triumphed."
A message overnight on the Twitter account of the government's Disaster Operations Center declared: "We believe all hostages have been released…situation of hostiles to be confirmed,"
The declarations came after the security forces mounted a major assault on Monday afternoon in an effort to free the remaining people Kenyan officials still believed to be inside. Gunfire and explosions erupted as the operation started, accompanied by a black plume of smoke billowing into the air.
Meanwhile, sketchy details began to emerge about the assailants. A Caucasian-looking woman in a head scarf fired on shoppers at the Westgate mall with an assault rifle as they fled and dove for cover, said a Western security officer briefed on the assault.
Most of the other attackers remain unidentified.
The siege started on Saturday, after armed assailants rushed into the mall from three entrances and opened fire on those inside.
The account of female militants jibes with statements by witnesses who said they saw women taking part in the assault.
One man said he saw three women among the assailants who went in and out of the supermarket storeroom in which he was hiding. Interior cabinet Secretary Joseph Ole Lenku said on Monday that some militants had disguised themselves as women, without explaining why.
Meanwhile, Kenya's military, which was taking part in the counterassault on the mall, confirmed that the assailants came from a number of countries, although an official declined to disclose details in a briefing with reporters on Monday.
"We have an idea who these people are, and they are clearly a multinational collection from all over the world," said Maj. Gen. Julius Karanja, the chief of general staff for the Kenyan military.
A list of purported attackers, including Europeans and Americans, appeared to have come from a Twitter account not sanctioned by the group. The list couldn't be independently verified.
Kenya's foreign minister, Amina Mohamed, told PBS's "NewsHour" program that two or three Americans and one female British national were among the attackers. She said the Americans were 18 to 19 years old, of Somali or Arab origin and lived in Minnesota and another American location.
The State Department said it had seen reports of American involvement and was looking into them. "At this point, we have no definitive evidence of the nationalities or identities of the perpetrators," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday on CNN.
The security forces also appeared to be growing to include international participants. Israeli forces joined Kenyan troops pursuing the militants inside the mall on Monday, witnesses said.
The Israeli government declined to comment on their presence and Kenyan officials continued to stress that the rescue was a purely Kenyan operation.
There are a number of Israeli-owned shops in Westgate and the mall itself is at least partially Israeli-owned.
In New York on Monday, President Barack Obama, calling al-Shabaab "one of the most vicious terrorist organizations in the world," said he spoke with Mr. Kenyatta and promised U.S. assistance with the investigation.
"Despite being severely weakened as an insurgency, al-Shabaab's lethality as a terrorist outfit has been fairly constant," a U.S. official said. "Al-Shabaab's operational arm may be benefiting from additional resources now that the group is less preoccupied with governance."
Monday's rescue mission was punctuated by gunfire and large explosions that sent bystanders scurrying from the upscale mall and turned a bustling suburb of East Africa's commercial capital into a conflict zone.
Smoke came from a fire set by the militants in a supermarket in an attempt to prevent security forces from advancing, said Mr. Ole Lenku, the interior cabinet secretary. But later reports from security forces inside suggested that it may have been government troops who set fire to a generator as a diversion while they entered the mall.
Before Monday's government operation, at least 47 people were believed to be still trapped inside, based on Red Cross missing-persons reports.
The Western security officer briefed on the operation could confirm only three people freed on Monday afternoon. Mr. Ole Lenku said 10 Kenyan security forces had been wounded and were receiving treatment.
Kenyan police had promised an assault on the shopping center, but also said they were moving forward slowly in order to protect the civilians hiding inside and possibly being held at gunpoint by the attackers.
—Idil Abshir
and Nicholas Bariyo
contributed to this article.
Write to Peter Wonacott at peter.wonacott@wsj.com and Heidi Vogt at heidi.vogt@wsj.com
Original source: Top Stories - Google News
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