KENYAN police have arrested five suspects in connection with Thursday’s attack at Garissa University College, Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said on Friday, according to reports of local dailies. Nkaissery told reporters the university will be able to confirm Saturday if everyone has been accounted for.
Thursday’s attack by al-Shabaab militants killed 147 people, including 142 students, three security officers and two university security personnel. The attack left 104 people injured, including 19 who are in critical condition. The finding of a man hidden under a bed sparked an additional search of the building. Sources said three people, all students, were found alive. A female student was found under a pile of bodies, another female student was hiding in a wardrobe and a male student was hiding in the bathroom, sources confirmed .
Student Hellen Titus said she survived by fooling the attackers into thinking she was dead. After gunmen shot fellow students, she smeared their blood onto her body to make it seem she’d been shot, too, she mentioned at a makeshift center for evacuated students. “In the time of shooting,” she said, “they skipped me.”
The killings are the bloodiest blow extremists have dealt to the country since the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. But it was also yet another pave stone in the long path of violence between Kenya and the Somali militants. To understand Thursday’s attack, one must understand this: Kenya and Al-Shabaab are at war.
Although al Qaeda was behind the 1998 attack that killed more than 200 people, Al-Shabaab has killed many more Kenyans and is by far the country’s most persistent tormenter, according to a University of Maryland study. Their attacks have notched up since 2008. And in October 2011, Kenya Defense Forces invaded Somalia, where Al-Shabaab is based, with the crushing Operation Linda Nchi, Swahili for “Protect the Country.” Thus began a bloody vicious cycle, with Al-Shabaab retaliating on Kenyan soil with ever more spectacular mass killings.
Thus we see once again terror activities based on religion and retaliation – Al Shabaab kills Christians in Kenya and the Kenyan government retaliates by killing their members – who are mostly Muslims. This vicious cycle of retaliation will not stop unless one party gives in – and it is unlikely to happen as it is based on quasi religious ideology – and applied by fanatics in the name of religion. Unfortunately no religion embraces killings without due process – a fact which terror groups like Al Shabaab conveniently forget. They use religion as a cloak to disguise their real intent – which is to gain power through terror and violence. Groups like Al Shabaab will come and go – but the violence they perpetrate will wreak devastation which will be painfully felt by others. It is a tragedy.
