Executing Terror

"Just before the cookery event, I was with about 35 kids including two of my own. Then a grenade went off and then the shots started coming in. One hit the kid beside me. I tried to stop the bleeding, but I didn't know what I was doing... I couldn't save him. They threw quite a few grenades at us. Eventually a gentleman came running towards us with a handgun, and he told us to get up and get out. I saw someone carry my daughter away. I helped all of the kids jump over the wall."
Kamal Kaur

"They came from the basement of the mall and started firing in all directions. Within minutes the floor was littered with bodies. Whoever survived was running helter-skelter in search of cover; it was pure chaos."
Shashikant Sanghani

NBC News

Precisely noon on Saturday, when the Westgate mall in Nairobi was certain to be at its most popularly crowded is when the three-pronged invasion of armed terrorists from al-Shabab made their explosive entrance. Shoppers crowded into the mall's 80 stores; perfect timing. Three assaults on three different levels to cut off escape and push the crowds into a chaotic mass of desperate-to-escape people.

One group in black with turbans, armed with assault weapons at the main entrance. The second group entering the second floor through the rooftop parking lot. The third group down a ramp to the basement. The questioning of the panicked people; Muslims over there, all others remain where you are; reminiscent of the selection process at Nazi concentration camps; Muslims to be spared, non-Muslims slaughtered.

Security forces and the police response was agonizingly slow, but the rescue of people commenced as gunfire and explosions continued. The Kenyan forces, despite the words of confidence and having everything under control, were outmatched, outgunned. They had pistols and tear gas. The intruders had assault rifles guaranteed greater accuracy and penetration. Pistols in the hands of police, useless against the bulletproof vests worn by the jihadists.

A woman was reported to have been giving orders which the others, armed men, obeyed. A shop had been rented by the jihadists for storage of belt-fed heavy machine guns, used against Kenyan troops in the open-aisle supermarket. At the back of every store service entrances where any among the attackers who meant to escape, could.

The initial attack against civilian shoppers by AK-47s and grenades replaced by machine guns used against the military.

Saturday's attack turns into Sunday's hostages and a holding situation along with a search for people remaining in hiding, to be led to safety. Command and control were less than optimum; photos of mall patrons not being cautionary-vetted and processed until latter attack stages. Security perimeter finally established but some of the attackers thought to have left, leaving behind others meant to stay on.

On Tuesday, Kenyan government claims a fire set by the terrorists was responsible for the parking roof collapse. Eventually admitting to an incredulous public that Kenyan soldiers caused the parking garage collapse, firing rocket-propelled grenades into the structure. Firing RPGs into sustaining columns not thought to represent the best of all possible defence-and-secure methods.

AP Photo/Kenya Presidency    This photo released by the Kenya Presidency shows the collapsed upper car park of the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya Thursday, Sept. 26, 2013.