Kenya Mall Siege: Six Britons 'Killed'

Six Britons are believed to have died in a terrorist attack in a Kenyan mall, as tributes flow for a British architect who was killed alongside his heavily pregnant wife.

Security forces are still battling gunmen in the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi as they attempt to bring the three-day siege to an end.

At least 62 people have been killed in the brutal assault by militant group al Shabaab.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond updated the number of Britons feared dead from four to six, and warned the figure may rise further.

“Our current best estimate is we now have six British nationals who have died in this incident,” he said, after leaving a meeting of the Government’s emergency Cobra committee in the Cabinet Office.

“Of the additional two, one is confirmed and another one we believe to be a British national and we are awaiting final confirmation but we are pretty certain we now have six British nationals who have died.”

Jenah Bawa and her mother Zahira, who moved to Kenya from the UK several years ago, were two of the British nationals killed.

It has also emerged that two of the other victims, British-Australian Ross Langdon and his Dutch wife Elif Yavuz, were expecting their first baby in two weeks.

Mr Langdon, 33, designed an Aids hospital in Kenya “pro bono” and helped create eco-lodges and socially sustainable tourism. 

Friends say Mr Langdon donated much of his time in Africa for free.

His wife, Ms Yavuz, also 33, was a malaria specialist with a PhD in public health policy from Harvard University.

She had completed her dissertation research on malaria in eastern Africa and was working with the Gates Foundation in Kenya.

Through her work, she recently met former US president Bill Clinton and posted a photograph of the meeting on her Facebook page last month.

A friend of the couple, Tasmanian sculptor Peter Adams, said the pair dedicated their lives to working for a peaceful world.

He said they were “agents of change in the best sense”. 

“Besides a personal loss for myself, this is a major global loss,” Mr Adams wrote on his blog.

He said Mr Langdon “was a colleague and friend who went out into the world as an architect doing wondrous things”.

“He designed – pro bono – an Aids hospital in Kenya. In Uganda he designed and supervised a unique eco-village employing only local labour. There is much, much more,” Mr Adams said.

In 2012, Mr Langdon gave a talk at a TED conference in the Polish city of Krakow about his sustainable projects in Uganda.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan “ideas worth spreading”.

Mr Langdon told the audience he was inspired by growing up in rural Tasmania, where he was born.

“We milked our own cows, worked the land and grew vegetables and fruit that we lived off,” he recalled, in a video of the talk available online.

He said his childhood persuaded him it was better to try to adapt to one’s environment than to attempt to change it.

“I thought it might be better to be like a chameleon – able to adapt and change and blend with our environment rather than conquer it,” he said.

Mr Langdon worked for several companies before founding his own firm Regional Associates in May 2008.

Regional Associates said on its website: “Profoundly talented and full of life, Ross enriched the lives of all those around him.

“Ross’s leadership on projects throughout East Africa was inspirational, and he will be will be very, very sorely missed by us all.

“Our deepest condolences and thoughts are with Ross and Elif’s families at this very difficult time.”

:: A helpline has been set up for people in the UK who are concerned about relatives in Kenya: 020 7008 000. 

Kenya Mall Siege: Six Britons 'Killed'