Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation Bernard Membe.
By Frank Aman
The police are investigating on a person who is said to be a Tanzanian national linked to the Garissa University attack on Thursday.
It was reported on Friday that five people are in custody following
the al-Shabaab attack in eastern Kenya on Thursday which left almost
150 people dead.
Speaking to this paper yesterday, police spokesperson Advera
Bulimba said it is too early to issue official statement on the matter,
but insisting that police are working tirelessly to identify the person.
According to the report four more people have been found alive on
the campus, but two are suspects and have been arrested including the
person believed to be Tanzanian.
She said they have received reports from various international
media outlets that there was one Tanzanian among the five arrested
people at the scene.
Asked if there were Tanzanians at Garissa University, Ms Bulimba
said police were still investigating to establish whether there were
Tanzanian students studying there at the campus.
“It is too early to say but police are still investigating to
identify if there are Tanzanian nationals studying at the college as
well as to get more information about the person who was arrested at the
scene,” she said.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation
Bernard Membe, his deputy Mahadhi Juma Maalim, and the government
spokesman, Assa Mwambene, could not be reached when this paper contacted
them.
A witness told BBC Africa on Friday that she heard the gunman
receiving instructions on mobile phones, and speaking in Kiswahili, an
official language in Kenya - raising the possibility that some of the
attackers were locals and not from Somalia, al-Shabaab's heartland.
Reports say gunmen attacked the campus early Thursday as morning
prayers were underway, shooting indiscriminately and taking hostages
before being killed by security forces, officials said.
Friday evening survivors of the Garissa attack said they played dead for hours to save themselves from being shot.
The official death toll is now at 148, excluding the four
terrorists. It includes 142 students, three university guards and three
policemen.
The militants spoke in fluent Kiswahili and were fairly young,
survivors recalled. They told them: “You pay taxes to buy guns which we
are now using to kill you.
“They told us to stop paying taxes because it is the taxes that the
government uses to buy guns for the Kenya Defence Forces. They claimed
they were using guns snatched from Kenyan soldiers,” said Millicent
Murugi from Embu, a second year student of Education.
A pregnant young woman told Saturday Nation at Garissa Hospital:
“They also told us that if (President) Kenyatta doesn’t remove Kenyan
soldiers from Somalia, they will kill everybody else on sight.”
Al-Shabaab, which is linked to al-Qaeda, said it carried out the
attack. The group says it is at war with Kenya, which sent troops to
Somalia in 2011 to fight the militants.
Al-Shabaab is a Somali group that the United States designated as a
foreign terrorist organisation in March 2008. It wants to turn Somalia
into a fundamentalist Islamic state, according to the Council on Foreign
Relations.
The group has been blamed for attacks in Somalia that have killed
international aid workers, journalists, civilian leaders and African
Union peacekeepers.
It has a history of striking abroad, too. Before admitting to the
Kenya quarry attack, Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the July 2010
suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, that killed more than 70 people,
including a US citizen, who had gathered at different locations to watch
the broadcast of the World Cup final soccer match.
And Al-Shabaab has links to other organisations. In February 2012,
the group's leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, and al Qaeda leader Ayman
al-Zawahiri released a video announcing the alliance of the two
organisations.
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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