Kenya began emotional commemorations on today to mark the first anniversary of Nairobi's Westgate mall massacre, remembering the 67 people killed by Somali Islamist gunmen and those who risked their lives to stop them.
In a speech at a memorial site opened at the capital's National Museum, First Lady Margaret Kenyatta said the east African nation had been "seriously scarred" but was not broken by the attackers from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab rebels.
"This is a time that brings much pain and sorrow to many, and is still a time of healing, (we) having also lost members of our family in this senseless massacre," said Kenyatta, whose nephew and his fiancee were among those killed.
"The nation may have been seriously scarred but we shall never be broken as a people," she said.
A week of memorial events opened with an emotional film called "Our Nairobi", which included testimonies of those caught up in the attack.
The four Shebab gunmen stormed the upmarket mall on a busy Saturday afternoon on September 21, 2013, hurling grenades and shooting scores in cold blood with automatic rifles.
"We saw people panic, running and screaming everywhere all around the mall," said Rama Manikumar, who was having a drink in a cafe when the shooting started, and whose testimony was featured in the film.
"It was like a battlefield, the whole place was in smoke, there were no lights... A lot of broken glass and ammunition on the floor," she said.
The shopping centre was crowded with hundreds of shoppers, friends meeting for a meal, as well as a children's cooking competition.
"I want Kenya to be back to itself, to have peace, harmony, love, and things like terrorism to never happen to us again," said Kennedy Mungai, who had been working as a waiter at a cafe when the shooting erupted.
Shoppers were hunted down in supermarket aisles and killed, in what the Shebab said was revenge for Kenya's sending of troops to fight the extremists in Somalia as part of an African Union force.
Kenyans, however, are hoping that the commemorations will also show how people were brought together in face of the horror.
Ranju Shah recounted how she and others had hid themselves in a storage area for two hours as fighting raged, with Kenyans from all ethnicities comforting each other.
"The whole incident has brought the people of Kenya together," Shah said. "Everybody tried to help everybody, they didn't care about what caste, creed or religion they were following, they were all helping each other.
