Death Toll Rises to 14 in Attack on Nairobi Hotel-Office Complex

Death Toll Rises to 14 in Attack on Nairobi Hotel-Office Complex

NAIROBI, Kenya — The loss of life rose to 14 on Wednesday in a fear based oppressor assault pursued by Shabab aggressors, including a suicide plane and a few shooters, who raged a lavish inn and office complex in Nairobi, President Uhuru Kenyatta said. 

A woman fleeing from the DusitD2 hotel complex in Nairobi on Wednesday. The death toll rose to 14 in the terrorist attack waged by Shabab militants.

Mr. Kenyatta said later in a discourse to the country that the majority of the assailants had been "wiped out" and that the task was finished, after gunfire was gotten notification from the complex prior on Wednesday morning, multi day after the experts said that the majority of the structures in the territory focused in the ambush had been anchored. 

"We will look for each individual associated with arranging, subsidizing and executing this egregious demonstration," Mr. Kenyatta said. He said the country was on the most astounding caution "and will remain so."

We wish to caution all members of the public including politicians that Dusit Hotel and the area around 14 Riverside Drive is a Crime Scene that is under an active security operation.Until it is declared safe, everyone not actively involved in the operation should avoid the area.

— National Police Service-Kenya (@NPSOfficial_KE) January 16, 2019

Relatives of the victims were traveling to morgues and hospitals in search of more information, and the Red Cross said it had set up teams to help them find victims and deal with the aftermath. The State Department said that one of the victims was an American, but provided no details.

“We can now confirm that 14 innocent lives were lost in this murderous attack,” Mr. Kenyatta said. Seven hundred civilians were evacuated during the response to the terrorist attack, he added.

The attack on Tuesday began at about 3 p.m., when four men reportedly jumped out of a white car, opened fire at a security checkpoint, and blasted their way into the complex. The police and counterterrorism forces quickly responded, and gun battles were fought and cars burned as the police rushed people out of the complex.

Kenya’s interior cabinet secretary, Fred Matiang’i, speaking at the scene shortly after the operation came to a close, said, “The operation was executed very strictly and precisely.”

“We are moving now to Phase 2,” he added, “which is handling the criminals.”

The Shabab, which carried out a bloody attack at the Westgate mall in the Kenyan capital in 2013, is based in Somalia, where it has sought to impose its strict interpretation of Islam.

Dusit International, which runs the DusitD2 hotel in the Nairobi complex, said the hotel had been temporarily closed and that guests had been relocated elsewhere in the city, The Associated Press reported.