“The situation remains very, very fragile,” Ole Lenku said. “Our priority remains that we save as much lives as possible and that’s what makes this operation very, very delicate.”
Yesterday’s incident was the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in downtown Nairobi that killed 213 people. The al-Shabaab Islamist militant group in neighboring Somalia threatened to carry out attacks in Kenya after the country deployed its army to southern Somalia in October 2011 to fight the group. In 2010, the militants killed 74 people in an attack at a restaurant and sports club inUganda.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed to hunt down the perpetrators of the attack and said he lost “very close”relatives in the assault.
“Our security forces are conducting a multi-agency response to this attack as we speak and are in the process of neutralizing the attackers and securing the mall,” Kenyatta said yesterday. “We shall hunt down the perpetrators wherever they run to. We shall punish them for this heinous crime.”