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| Standoff at Nairobi mall after gunmen kill at least 59 - Washington Post Posted: 22 Sep 2013 08:49 AM PDT NAIROBI — More than 24 hours after Islamist militants stormed an upscale Nairobi mall, a tense standoff continued Sunday between the heavily armed assailants and Kenyan security forces, as the government announced that the death toll had risen to 59 with more than 175 injured in the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings. The attackers, strapped with grenades and wielding machine guns and AK-47 rifles, remained holed up inside the Westgate Premier Shopping Mall with as many as 30 hostages, Kenyan government officials said Sunday. An unknown number of people remained inside the building, hiding from the gunmen. Sporadic gunfire erupted at the mall Sunday morning as additional Kenyan security forces arrived to help defuse the crisis, which began Saturday afternoon. In a statement, Kenya's Red Cross said that 49 people had been reported missing, citing police figures, but it was unclear whether this number included the hostages. A senior Kenyan Interior Ministry official, Joseph Ole Lenku, said that Kenyan forces had rescued about 1,000 people from the mall and that 10 to 15 attackers remained inside the shopping center. "The government will go out of its way to make sure we do not lose lives," Lenku told reporters. Former Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga told reporters that he had been told that the precise number of hostages inside the mall was unknown. "There are quite a number of people still being held hostage on the third floor and the basement area where the terrorists are still in charge," Odinga said, according to the Associated Press. Al-Shabab, a Somali militia linked to al-Qaeda, asserted responsibility for the assault in numerous tweets using its official Twitter handle, @HSM_Press. The militia said it was retaliating for Kenya sending troops to fight in neighboring Somalia, where it remains a key military actor. "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," the militia said in one tweet. Early Sunday morning, al-Shabab's Twitter account was suspended for the third time this year. The dead and injured included young and old, Kenyans and foreigners, according to witnesses and a U.S. State Department official familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly. No Americans were believed to be among the dead, the official said. Three U.S. citizens were reported injured. Several children were reported killed or injured. Annamaria Watrin, an American aid worker from Minnesota, said a friend and his 13-year-old daughter had gone to the mall for a birthday party. "As they went to park their car, she saw five gunmen pop out. They shot her dad. He died," Watrin said. The girl was injured. Watrin said the girl spent a couple of hours huddled in the car before Kenyan security agents could evacuate her in an ambulance. The assault was the deadliest terrorist attack in this East Africa nation since al-Qaeda operatives staged twin bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998, killing more than 200 people in Kenya alone. Al-Shabab has staged numerous smaller attacks in the country since the government sent troops to Somalia in October 2011 to fight the militia. Most of those assaults targeted bus stations and churches, but never areas frequented by Westerners and wealthy Kenyans. The tourism industry is Kenya's second-largest source of foreign exchange, and dozens of Western aid agencies and businesses are based in the country. |
| NRA's LaPierre blames poor security for Navy Yard shooting - CBS News Posted: 22 Sep 2013 08:05 AM PDT Monday's shooting at the Navy Yard happened because the military facility was "completely unprotected," National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre said Sunday, brushing aside suggestions that more stringent background checks or new gun laws might prevent more mass shootings of the sort that have repeatedly scarred the country in recent years. "This is a tragedy that should not have happened," LePierre said of Monday's shooting, which claimed the lives of 13 people, including the gunman. "How could anybody look at what happened this week and say there was enough security there?" "In a post-9/11 world, a naval base within miles from Congress and the White House" was left "completely unprotected," LaPierre said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press"", calling for "layers of security around our military bases" to ensure it doesn't happen again. He also urged policymakers to consider allowing service members on bases to carry firearms to provide an added measure of security. "We need to look at letting the men and women who know firearms and are trained in them do what they do best, which is protect and survive," he said. LaPierre's suggestion was reminiscent of the NRA's call for armed guards in the nation's schools in the wake of the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Then and now, LaPierre insisted that the problem isn't the abundance of guns in America or the fact that people can access them with ease, but a combination of inadequate security, a mental health system that fails to raise "red flags" about potentially dangerous individuals, and a criminal justice system that fails to enforce federal gun laws. He suggested that if someone is "involuntarily committed," or if mental health professionals determine someone is dangerous, that person ought to be flagged as a potential threat and prevented from buying a gun. "The only way you can stop them is you send up the red flags," he said, warning of the dangers of inaction. "When the camera goes off, nobody's going to do anything, and if we leave these homicidal maniacs on the street...they're going to kill." Despite the relatively muted reaction from policymakers to this week's shooting in regards to gun control, especially in comparison with other recent mass shootings, the NRA CEO scorned "all the outrage this week - the first two days of the elite media and the politicians trying to stir this toward firearms." When he was asked whether the government should require background checks for private firearm sales between individuals, LaPierre said, "No, I don't believe you ought to be under the thumb of the federal government." In the face of familiar opposition from the NRA and other gun rights advocates, Obama vowed Saturday at a Congressional Black Caucus dinner to revisit his push to strengthen the country's gun laws, which mobilized lawmakers and activists earlier this year after the shooting at Sandy Hook but ultimately fell short in Congress. "We fought a good fight earlier this year, but we came up short," he said. "And that means we've got to get back up and go back at it. Because as long as there are those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun, then we've got to work as hard as possible for the sake of our children. We've got to be ones who are willing to do more work to make it harder." |
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