WARNING – VERY GRAFFIC CONTENT !

Kenya shopping mall attack: Nairobi hostages were tortured before they were killed, says police doctor

Rumours of rapes, disfigurement and beheadings are rife in Kenya’s capital. A police doctor scouring Nairobi’s Westgate mall for bodies after a four-day siege by Islamist gunmen that claimed dozens of lives has said victims were tortured before they died, according to a Kenyan newspaper.

“Those are not allegations. Those are f****** truths,” the doctor, a forensics expert, told The Star newspaper. “They removed balls, eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood. They drove knives inside a child’s body. Actually, if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers.”

The information could not be independently verified, but William Pike, the British editor of The Star, said the reporters working on the story had been given similar accounts from other sources. “We have [the source] on a recording,” Mr Pike said. “He was talking very graphically, and he was very angry.”

The horrifying details of what may be the last moments of some of the hostages at the hands of terrorists from Somalia’s al-Shabaab movement come amid mounting public anger over the authorities silence about the details of the siege. Many questions remain, such as what happened to the potentially dozens of hostages still unaccounted for? What happened to the attackers? And what caused parts of Westgate to collapse in the final hours of the siege?

Police have asked for patience as they begin the painstaking work of gathering evidence and searching for bodies, with Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku warning it could take up to a week to complete the search. He has said that an “insignificant” number of bodies are still trapped.

Gunmen armed with machine guns and grenades stormed the Westgate mall on Saturday lunchtime, shooting indiscriminately, and killing at least 61 people. A further six security officers died in attempts to rout the militants. During the siege, rescuers evacuated many survivors, but reports suggested hostages were being held by militants. Kenya’s Red Cross says that 71 people are still listed as missing.

Ghoulish accounts on the fate of the hostages have circulated Nairobi and there have been claims that the military was forced to blow up part of the Westgate complex not just to bring the siege to an end, but to end the appalling suffering of hostages amid reports that hostages were raped, and others beheaded and their heads thrown out of the windows.

None of these reports could be verified amid what is a febrile atmosphere in the city following the worst terrorist attack on Kenyan soil since the US embassy bombings by Al-Qa’ida in 1998 that killed more than 200.

Allegations of rape are not commonly linked with Islamist militants, although there are increasing numbers of rape cases reported in Somalia after long years of conflict.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/kenya-shopping-mall-attack-nairobi-hostages-were-tortured-before-they-were-killed-says-police-doctor-8842509.html

Kenyan military reports that some of the victims in the mall had been beheaded and butchered with knives.

Several Western officials said they had heard reports from the Kenyan military that some of the victims in the mall had been beheaded and butchered with knives. Kenyan officials declined to comment, but one Western security adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said, “I fully expect it.”

“They had people under their control for three days,” the adviser said, referring to how the assailants had holed up in the mall with terrified shoppers hiding in several places.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/27/world/africa/2-more-militant-attacks-unsettle-kenya.html?_r=0

Eyes gouged out, bodies hanging from hooks, and fingers removed with pliers’: Horrific claims of torture emerge as soldiers reveal gory Kenyan mall massacre details

Soldiers told of the horrific torture meted out by terrorists in the Nairobi mall massacre yesterday with claims hostages were dismembered, had their eyes gouged out and were left hanging from hooks in the ceiling.

Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed with pliers before being blinded and hanged.
Children were found dead in the food court fridges with knives still embedded in their bodies, it was claimed.

Most of the defeated terrorists, meanwhile, were reportedly discovered ‘burnt to ashes’, set alight by the last extremist standing to try to protect their identities.
The horrifying details came yesterday as the first pictures emerged from within the wreckage of the building, showing piles of bodies left strewn across the floor.
A third of the mall was destroyed in the battle between terrorists and Kenyan troops.

Yesterday, soldiers and doctors who were among the first people into the mall after it was reclaimed on Tuesday, spoke of the horrifying scenes inside.
‘You find people with hooks hanging from the roof,’ said one Kenyan doctor, who asked not to be named.

A soldier, who took pictures at a bread counter and at the ArtCaffe, said he was so traumatised by what he saw he has had to seek counselling.

During the firefight, hostages reportedly had their throats slashed from ear to ear and were thrown screaming from third-floor balconies as the siege came to a bloody end. Forensics teams, still sifting through the mountains of rubble, fear many more bodies are yet to be found.

Shell-shocked Kenyan troops said the inside of the Israeli-run mall resembled a ‘scene from a horror movie’ with blood spattered everywhere and dead bodies strewn across the floor.

One soldier told the Daily Mirror: ‘I have seen many bad things, but this will haunt me for the rest of my days.’
The main thrust of the operation began at 6am on Monday when troops and helicopters surrounded the building, but their efforts were hampered by an Al Shabaab sniper who managed to pin them back for nearly 24 hours.

As tear gas was used to try to flush him out, another terrorist reportedly blew himself up. It is believed the resulting fire may have killed dozens of shoppers in a supermarket. 
The following day, the soldiers were ordered to adopt a ‘shoot to kill’ policy and launched their final attack on the terror group on the roof of the mall at 5pm.
The mall was retaken about half an hour later.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2434278/Kenyan-mall-massacre-torture-claims-emerge-soldiers.html#ixzz2g4kJIxp8