Uhuru Kenyatta: vows retaliation against Shebab

Kenya’s president vowed Saturday to retaliate in the “severest way” against Somalia’s Shebab Islamists after they massacred nearly 150 people in a university.

Two days after the Islamist militants lined up non-Muslim students, taunting them, then executing them in Shebab’s bloodiest attack to date, President Uhuru Kenyatta warned they would face justice for the “mindless slaughter”.

The day-long seige at the university in the northeastern town of Garissa, close to the border with Somalia, claimed 148 lives, including 142 students, three police officers and three soldiers.

The massacre was #Kenya’s deadliest attack since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, and Kenyatta declared three days of national mourning beginning Sunday, calling for the killings to unite and not divide the country.

Earlier on Saturday, the Shebab warned of a “long, gruesome war” unless Kenya withdrew its troops from Somalia, and threatened “another bloodbath”.

Hours after Shebab’s warning, police in Garissa paraded four corpses of the gunmen piled on top of each other face down in the back of a pick up truck followed by a huge crowd.

Police insisted the grim display was to see if anyone could identify the assailants, but some onlookers threw stones at the bodies as they passed, while others jeered and shouted at the dead.

In Nairobi’s ethnic Somali district demonstrators took to the streets demonstrating against the Shebab, calling for unity in the country.

Five men have been arrested in connection with Thursday’s attack.

– Two days inside wardrobe –

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.

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

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