Nairobi News

Police on Saturday paraded the naked corpses of Al-Shabaab gunmen who killed 147 people in one of Kenya’s worst massacres, hours after the militants threatened “another bloodbath”.

Five men have been arrested in connection with Thursday’s attack, where the gunmen staged a one-day seige at the university in Garissa town.

Earlier on Saturday, the Al-Shabaab warned of a “long, gruesome war” unless Kenya withdrew its troops from Somalia.

NATIONAL MOURNING

Meanwhile, President Uhuru Kenyatta declared three days of national mourning.

Hours after Al-Shabaab’s warning, police paraded four corpses piled on top of each other face down in the back of a pick up truck followed by a huge crowd, saying the grim display was to see if anyone could identify the assailants.

But some threw stones at the bodies as they passed, others jeered and shouted at the dead.

Meanwhile, forensic investigators continued to scour the site where one student shocked security forces – who had said all students were accounted for – by emerging unharmed from a wardrobe where she had hidden for over two days.

TRAUMATISED

A Kenya Red Cross spokeswoman said that the 19-year old was traumatised and dehydrated but physically unharmed and undergoing assessment by doctors.

Thursday’s attack on Garissa University, situated near the border with Somalia, claimed 147 lives, including 142 students, three police officers and three soldiers.

“Those children were our future, so part of our future has been destroyed,” Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said Friday.

Over 600 students from the now closed college on Saturday boarded buses for the home towns around the country.

ARRESTS MADE

The massacre was Kenya’s deadliest attack since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, and the bloodiest ever assault by the Al-Shabaab militants.

Interior ministry spokesman, Mwenda Njoka, said five arrests had already been made, including three “coordinators” captured as they fled towards Somalia, and two others in the university.