Some of the jihadists inside the mall may disagree. “Gunshots ring out at Nairobi mall; Kenyans mourn,” by Rodney Muhumuza and Tom Odula for the Associated Press, September 25:
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) “” Gunshots rang out from the upscale mall in Kenya’s capital Wednesday morning, the day after the president declared an end to a four-day siege by Islamic militants.
Government spokesman Manoah Esipisu told The Associated Press the shots came from Kenyan forces going room to room in the large Westgate Mall, firing protectively before entering unknown territory.
“During sanitization once you take control of the place if you go to a room where you haven’t visited before you shoot first to make sure you aren’t walking into an ambush,” he said. “But there hasn’t been any gunfire from the terrorists for more than 36 hours.”
But a top security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said even around the time President Uhuru Kenyatta told the nation in a televised address that “we have ashamed and defeated our attackers” on Tuesday night, three shots rang out at the mall.
He said Kenyan authorities are still trying to determine where those shots came from.
Meanwhile, the Kenyan government said forensic experts from the United States, Britain and Israel would be assisting them in their investigation of the attack.
“The mall is sealed off, it is a crime scene,” Esipisu said.
The process of retrieving bodies from inside the mall still had not begun Wednesday morning “” possibly indicating that the situation was not yet considered secure “” though a city morgue official said his workers were preparing to go into the building soon.
The attack claimed by Somali militant group al-Shabab killed at least 61 civilians, six security officers and five extremists, the president said. Three floors of the mall collapsed, and at least one more militant’s body is believed to be buried in the rubble. Officials said the death count will likely rise. Estimates varied between only a few bodies to dozens of bodies possibly still inside the mall.
Fears persisted that some of the attackers could still be alive and loose inside the rubble of the mall, a vast complex that had shops for retailers like Bose, Nike and Adidas, as well as banks, restaurants and a casino.
A high-ranking security official involved in the investigations said it would take time to search the whole mall before declaring that the terrorist threat had been crushed. That official insisted on anonymity in order to discuss information not publicly disclosed….