Kenyan security forces took control of a shopping mall in the capital, Nairobi, killing two militants and freeing an unspecified number of hostages as it sought to end a two-day siege in which 69 people died.
Police and army officials occupy every level of the four- story Westgate Mall and the operation to flush out the gunmen and rescue those held captive may end “soon,” Interior Secretary Joseph Ole Lenku told reporters on Tuesday. Smoke continued to billow out of the building about three hours after a fire broke out amid sporadic bursts of gunfire.
“Evacuating hostages has gone on very well,” Ole Lenku said. “We are very certain that they are very, very few hostages if any in the building.” The attack was the deadliest in the country since the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in downtown Nairobi that killed 213 people. Al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist militant group, claimed responsibility for the raid.
