Kenya vows to 'punish' terrorists

Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta has pledged to hunt down and punish the terrorists behind a brutal attack on an upmarket Nairobi shopping mall which left at least 39 people dead.

The president said he had “personally lost family members in the Westgate attack”, in which at least 150 people were injured.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britons had undoubtedly been caught up in the “callous and cowardly and brutal” assault by a heavily-armed gang who singled out non-Muslims.

Mr Hague said “we should be ready for that and aware of that” as he revealed that the Government’s emergency response committee Cobra had met and a rapid deployment team was being sent to Kenya to help.

Somali-based militant group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the outrage, in which men armed with guns and grenades stormed the mall.

Dozens were reportedly being held hostage by the gang in the Westgate Mall, in the affluent Westlands district of the capital, which is popular with expats.

Mr Kenyatta said in a televised address that security forces were in the process of “neutralising the attackers and securing the mall” but he said it was a “delicate” operation. He urged Kenyans to “remain calm and vigilant” and asked them to donate blood to help treat the injured. And he vowed: “We shall hunt down the perpetrators wherever they run to. We shall get to them and we shall punish them for this heinous crime.”

Al-Shabaab, also known as Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (HSM), appeared to claim responsibility for the atrocity by writing on its official Twitter feed that “the Mujahideen entered Westgate Mall today at around noon”. It said it had previously warned the Kenyan government that, if they did not remove military forces from Somalia, there would be “severe consequences”.

“For long we have waged war against the Kenyans in our land, now it’s time to shift the battleground and take the war to their land,” it tweeted. “The Mujahideen entered Westgate Mall today at around noon and are still inside the mall, fighting the Kenyan Kuffar inside their own turf.”

The organisation claimed it had killed more than 100 Kenyan “kuffar”, a derogatory term used to describe non-Muslims.

Kenya vows to 'punish' terrorists