KENYA-SECURITY/GARISSA UPDATE Garissa shops closed for business after deadly attack kills scores in Kenya

Record ID: 160833

  • Title: KENYA-SECURITY/GARISSA UPDATE Garissa shops closed for business after deadly attack kills scores in Kenya
  • Date: 3rd April 2015
  • Summary: GARISSA, KENYA (APRIL 3, 2015) (REUTERS) POLICE OFFICER GETTING OUT OF VEHICLE / OFFICER DIRECTING TRAFFIC INCLUDING UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES (UNHCR) TRUCKS AMBULANCE DRIVING BEHIND UNHCR TRUCK RED CROSS OFFICIALS ABOARD UNHCR TRUCK POLICE HOLDING GUNS AS THEY DIRECT TRAFFIC EXTERIOR OF GARISSA UNIVERSITY VARIOUS OF CLOSED SHOPS IN GARISSA TOWN VARIOUS
  • Embargoed: 18th April 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA9XWBAZ4WUCQZE0H9S0ZMZE2C5
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Business ground to a halt on Friday (April 3) as most proprietors in Kenya's north-eastern town of Garissa decided to close shop a day after masked gunmen from the Islamist militant group al Shabaab stormed a university and killed at least 147 people.
    Strapped with explosives, the gunmen stormed the Garissa University College campus, some 200 km (120 miles) from the Somali border, in a pre-dawn rampage.
    Tossing grenades and spraying bullets at cowering students, the attackers initially killed indiscriminately. But they later freed some Muslims and instead targeted Christian students during a siege that lasted about 15 hours.
    "It has really affected us a lot. It has affected us business wise it has also affected our security, in development and it has been a big blow to us as it has affected employees who have lost their jobs as they were working there and also students who are innocent Kenya citizens that are not guilty of anything," said Mohammed Abdi, a Businessman in Garissa. "We as Garissa residents have also lost very good neighbours who we depended on each other and we have also lost businesses. Hospitals are closed, shops are also closed, and our customers have run away, this attack has taken us 51 years backwards.
    "We had started achieving developments we have never seen but now the cake has been taken out of our mouths. It has really taken us back."
    There was a heavy police presence in and around the university and along Kismayu Road which remains deserted for fear of further attacks.
    The violence will heap further pressure on President Uhuru Kenyatta, who has struggled to stop frequent militant gun and grenade attacks that have dented Kenya's image abroad and brought the country's vital tourism industry to its knees.
    More than 400 people have been killed by al Qaeda-allied al Shabaab in the east African nation since Kenyatta took office in April 2013, including some 67 people who died in a blitz on a shopping mall in the capital Nairobi in September of that year.
    Al Qaeda itself killed some 207 people when it blew up the U.S. embassy in Nairobi in 1998, an attack which remains the single biggest loss of life in Kenya since its independence from Britain in 1963.
    Al Shabaab says its recent wave of attacks are retribution for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to fight the group alongside other African Union peacekeepers.
    The group, which at one point controlled most of Somalia, has lost swathes of territory in recent years but diplomats have repeatedly warned this has not diminished al Shabaab's ability to stage guerrilla-style attacks at home and further abroad.
    Within hours of the attack, Kenya put up a 20 million shillings ($215,000) reward for the arrest of Mohammed Mohamud, a former Garissa teacher labelled "Most Wanted" in a government poster and linked by Kenyan media to two separate al Shabaab attacks in the neighbouring Mandera region last year.
    The government also imposed a dusk to dawn (6.30am-6.30pm) curfew on Garissa, Mandera and two other crime-ridden regions near the porous 700-km border with Somalia.
    However, diplomats and analysts say the move effectively concedes the government is not in control of these areas, which are widely seen to be Kenya's soft underbelly.
    As such, al Shabaab is likely to continue its strategy of attacking "low risk and high reward" soft targets in marginalized parts of the country, according to Ahmed Salim, a senior associate at Teneo Intelligence.
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