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Westgate: Remains all male


Kenyans will have to wait for longer before they know the identity of the bodies retrieved from the rubble at the Westgate Mall on Thursday.

According to the government pathologist Johansen Oduor, it was difficult,  to ascertain individual identities pending forensic investigations.

He said that although they were not able to identify the three individuals immediately, their bones show that they were all male.

“The individuals were all male that I can tell you for sure. But we need forensic anthropologists to be able to determine their identities. When bones are so burnt, it becomes very difficult to collect even samples for DNA, we need some more specialists to assist us,” said the pathologist.

Forensic anthropologists determine the age, the cause of death and individual identities by investigating the nature of bones.

“It may be very difficult to identify the people as at now. So far we think there were three individuals because there are pieces of bones which differ,” said Dr Oduor, moments after the postmortem.

It took two to three hours for the postmortem to be completed.

While Kenyans debate the identities of terrorists involved in the deadlyl terror attack, the ongoing investigation may unravel if indeed the terrorists died inside the mall or they escaped.

The bones were collected alongside three AK47 guns. According to Dr Oduor, most probably the casualties were the terrorists although forensic investigations would determine if for sure they were the ones.

“It is difficult to tell if the bones had gun shots or not because they were fragmented, and burnt. As far as I was told, the guns looked like they were being used by the people because, there were pieces of bones wherever the guns were, thus speculation that they could have been the terrorists,” he said.

Saturday’s investigation involved piecing together the bones to form a human structure. The investigators looked at the patterns of injury. They were able to come out with a logical conclusion that none of the bodies belonged to a female.

According to Dr Oduor, female and male bones are different and that is how they were able to identify the remains.

The investigators were not able to establish the cause of death.