Assailants identified as Shabab militants attacked a Nairobi luxury hotel and office complex on Tuesday, spreading death and panic as the police in Kenya’s capital evacuated civilians and sealed off the area.
President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Wednesday that at least 14 people were killed in the assault, during which one of Nairobi’s most secure areas was punctuated by gunfire and explosions.
The State Department confirmed late Tuesday that one victim was an American but provided no details.
One attacker was a suicide bomber, the police said, detonating an explosion in the lobby of the seven-story DusitD2 Hotel. The number of other assailants, armed with grenades and guns, was not clear. Security camera footage released to local media outlets showed at least four armed men in the complex.
The police warned it was possible that some of the assailants were still inside Nairobi’s 14 Riverside Drive complex, which includes the hotel, part of a Thai-owned international chain. By late evening, the Interior Ministry said the complex was safe, although gunfire was heard on Wednesday morning.
“I can now report that we have secured all the buildings that have been affected by these events,” Interior Minister Fred Matiang’i said in a statement broadcast on national television. “I can also now report that the country is now secure, that the nation remains calm and that Kenyans and all our visitors are safe and should feel free to continue going about their normal business.”
Mr. Matiang’i also said “we are now in the final stages of mopping up the area and securing evidence and documenting the consequences of this unfortunate event,” but said nothing about fatalities or injuries.
The assault by the Shabab, an Islamist extremist group with ties to Al Qaeda that has carried out many attacks in eastern Africa, came on the eve of a verdict in the trial of three men accused of helping the Shabab orchestrate a deadly assault on a the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi five years ago.
The inspector general of the police, Joseph Boinett, said Tuesday’s assault began at the I&M bank with an explosion that targeted three vehicles and “a suicide explosion in the foyer of Dusit hotel where a number of guests suffered severe injuries.”
Mr. Boinett told reporters that a “swift and targeted response by our security agencies” had contained the attack and that at least one suspect was in custody.
Dr. Mercy Korir, a physician at a Nairobi hospital, confirmed that at least 15 people had been wounded. Several hospitals in the city were appealing for blood donations, and the Kenya Red Cross opened a hotline for family members searching for loved ones.
Nairobi’s sprawling Village Market shopping complex, in the Gigiri neighborhood five miles away, closed temporarily after news of the attack broke, as a security precaution.
The raid began around 3 p.m. in the Westland area of the city, the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors the group’s activities, said. Witnesses told KTN News Kenya that four men had jumped out of a white car and opened fire as they arrived at a security checkpoint, before blasting their way into the complex.
“I just started hearing gunshots, and then started seeing people running away raising their hands up, and some were entering the bank to hide for their lives,” a woman working in the neighborhood told Reuters.
Police and counterterrorism officers quickly surrounded the complex, and videos showed security officers evacuating dozens of people from the buildings while gunfire crackled in the background and cars burned.
“I tried to escape with a friend but she fainted as we ran away from the gunshots,” one woman told KTN News. “So I had to leave her and hide in one of the bathrooms until the police came and rescued me.”
One man emerged covered with blood, and others less obviously wounded were also sent to nearby hospitals. As of 6 p.m., an unspecified number of people were still huddled inside the complex, according to local news reports and posts on Twitter.
“We are under attack at 14 Riverside Drive,” said a Twitter user identified as Miss Rachel. She later posted a message that she had been rescued.
One witness said she had seen body parts as she left the site. There were reports of gun victims, including at least one child, being treated at local hospitals.
The Shabab, which is based in Somalia, has been fighting the United Nations-backed government in Mogadishu, Somalia, for years, seeking to impose its strict interpretation of Islam.
In recent months, the group has carried out a spate of attacks in Kenya, killing dozens.
Tuesday’s attack came exactly three years after the group assaulted a Kenyan military base in Somalia that killed around 140 soldiers.
The group’s 2013 attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall killed 67 people. The three men accused of aiding the Shabab in that attack have denied the charges. A fourth suspect was acquitted earlier.
David Aronsen, a Shabab expert at the University of Warwick in England, said the group was known for plots timed to significant dates.
“If you look at their propaganda this is a very self-evidently determined policy,” he said. “So the authorities in Nairobi would have been on their guard in the last few days given the coincidence of Shabab-related events around this time of the calendar.”
The United States military has stepped up its attacks against Shabab in Somalia in recent months. The military conducted 47 strikes in 2018, up from 31 in 2017.
And the Americans already have carried out five strikes in 2019, most recently on Jan. 8 against a Shabab encampment in Somalia’s Yaaq Braawe, Bay Region.
But the ability of the militants to attack targets not only in Somalia but in neighboring Kenya punctuated its resilience.
“Despite the increased targeting of Shabab over the last few years, there is no evidence to support the assertion that Shabab’s insurgency has been abated or its leadership cadre has been depleted,” said Bill Roggio, editor of FDD’s Long War Journal, a website run by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that tracks military strikes against militant groups.
“Shabab continues to maintain an effective insurgency, controls large rural areas in southern and central Somalia, and continues to threaten Somali cities and towns,” he added.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of defendants on trial in Kenya on accusations they helped the Shabab orchestrate the assault on the Nairobi shopping mall five years ago. It is three, not four. (A fourth defendant was acquitted earlier.)
Reporting was contributed by Emily Oduor, Megan Specia, Rick Gladstone and Eric Schmitt.
