Nairobi gun attack death toll rises to 21
Kenyan security forces have killed all the Somali militants who stormed an upscale Nairobi hotel compound, taking at least 21 lives.
Fifty people believed to have been in the complex remained unaccounted for on Wednesday afternoon, the Kenya Red Cross said, raising the possibility of a much higher final death toll.
The bloody bodies of five attackers were broadcast across social media as President Uhuru Kenyatta announced the end of a 20-hour overnight siege that echoed a 2013 assault that killed 67 people in the Westgate shopping centre in the same district.
Somali group al Shabaab, an al Qaeda affiliate fighting to impose strict Islamic law, said they carried out the attack in revenge for U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
"The security operation ... is over and all the terrorists eliminated," Kenyatta said in a televised national address, looking drained and grave.
Kenyatta did not specify how many assailants there were, but CCTV clips showed at least five dressed in black, some sporting green grenade belts.
One militant is seen in one clip waiting outside a restaurant before blowing himself up in a cloud of debris just after 3 p.m. (1200 GMT). Another explosion near the entrance gate, possibly a grenade, ignites three cars before four men stroll by firing assault rifles and split into two groups.
One group entered a nearby office building, where they left a grenade in the lobby, a private security professional present during the attack told Reuters. Then they shot into elevators and offices as they searched for victims up to the sixth floor.
The other group raked the restaurant with gunfire. Eventually the militants holed up on or near the top floor of the hotel, taking potshots at those fleeing, he said.
Published: by Radio NewsHub