A Kenyan government source has told The Telegraph that most of the 147 victims of a terror attack on a Kenyan university on Thursday were killed as they lined up waiting for their turn to be shot.
“This is the level of evil that we are dealing with, it is something beyond the comprehension of anyone normal like you or I,” the source said. “These are not people who can be reasoned with, only force can stop them.”
So far, 147 people have been confirmed dead and 79 injured in Kenya’s worst terror attack for two decades, but officials have admitted that the death toll could climb higher still as piles of bodies are recounted.
At the gates of Garissa University, soldiers kept large crowds of sobbing relatives at bay as inside; the bodies of those killed were recounted. “I am so worried, I had a son who was among the students trapped inside the college, and since yesterday I have heard nothing,” said Habel Mutinda, an elderly man, his face streaming with tears.
One witness described how they headed directly to a lecture hall where Christian students had gathered for an early morning prayer session.
Kenya’s government, which has faced criticism for its failure to act on intelligence to fight against threats, said it would not be “intimidated or humiliated” by what happened. “The government is determined to fight back the terrorists, and I am confident we shall win this war against our enemies,” said Joseph Nkaissery, the Interior Minister.
Some of those who escaped Thursday’s massacre said posters had been put up around campus and the university’s administrators warned about an up-coming attack but they were “ignored” or dismissed as an April Fool’s joke. “Yesterday there were those notices, but as it was April 1, we just thought that it was fooling,” a student named Katherine said.
Students from a nearby teacher training college said they too had been warned that “strangers” suspected to be terrorists had been spotted in Garissa in the days leading up to the attack. As a result, their college was closed and they were sent home.
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