Foreign help for Kenya probe
September 25, 2013
Kenya's Interior Minister, Joseph Ole Lenku, told a press conference in Nairobi on Wednesday that both Kenyan and foreign investigators were combing through the rubble of the deadly mall shooting looking for bodies and evidence.
Lenku said forensic experts from Germany, Great Britain, the United States, Israel, Canada and Interpol were taking part.
"It is an elaborate process. Among the things that are going on now are fingerprinting, DNA identification (and) ballistic examinations," Lenku said.
Lenku did not answer questions regarding the identities of any of the attackers. There is speculation that a British woman and American citizens were among those who carried out the attack.
Despite claims by al-Shabab – the admitted perpetrators of the attack – that 137 people had been killed when Kenyan security forces carried out their assault of the building, the current official death toll is 67. Five attackers were also killed in the four-day siege, and eleven are being held in custody.
Parts of the building collapsed due to a fire inside the facility, but Lenku did not think the death toll would rise significantly, and added that any additional bodies that might be found would likely be of the attackers.
Roughly 15 suspected al-Shabab militants stormed the mall on Saturday and fired on civilians, saying they were targeting specifically non-Muslims. The assault was in retribution for a push by Kenyan forces into Somalia in 2011 which resulted in their removal from the region, the Somalia-based Islamist extremist group said.
mz/lw (Reuters, AFP, AP)