Kenya attack: Garissa University assault 'killed 147'

by Natalie Duval and Biodun Iginla, BBC News, Nairobi

11 minutes ago

The death toll in the attack by al-Shabab Islamist militants on a university in north-eastern Kenya has risen to 147, Kenyan government officials say.

They added that the operation to secure the the Garissa University College campus was now over, with all four attackers killed.
The evacuation of surviving students is now under way.
An overnight curfew is being implemented in parts of the country.
Four counties near the Kenya-Somalia border, Garissa, Wajir, Mandera and Tana River, would have dusk-to-dawn curfews imposed, disaster management officials said.
Nine students were critically injured and airlifted to the capital Nairobi for medical treatment, they added.
Attack as it happened.
Masked gunmen stormed the university early on Thursday morning.

How attack unfolded:

1. Militants enter the university grounds, two guards are shot dead
2. Shooting begins within the campus
3. Students attacked in their classrooms while preparing for exams
4. Gunmen believed isolated in the female dormitories
5. Some students make an escape through the fence
Kenya attack: Wanted man
Who are al-Shabab?

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned what he called a "terrorist attack" and said the UN was ready to help Kenya "prevent and counter terrorism and violent extremism".
The Kenyan government has named Mohamed Kuno, a high-ranking al-Shabab official, as the mastermind of the attack.
A BBC Somali Service reporter says Mohamed Kuno was headmaster at an Islamic school in Garissa before he quit in 2007. He goes by the nickname "Dulyadeyn", which means "ambidextrous" in Somali.

'Shot on the spot'

Earlier, al-Shabab told the BBC its members were holding Christians hostage and freeing Muslims.
The gunmen reportedly ordered students to lie down on the floor, but some of them escaped.
Student Augustine Alanga told the BBC's Newsday programme: "It was horrible, there was shooting everywhere."
He said it was "pathetic" that the university was only guarded by two police officers.

Student Collins Wetangula said when the gunmen entered his hostel he could hear them opening doors and asking if the people inside were Muslims or Christians, the AP news agency reports.
"If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot. With each blast of the gun I thought I was going to die," he said.
Al-Shabab says it attacked the university because it is at war with Kenya, BBC Africa analyst Mary Harper reports.
Kenyan troops entered Somalia in October 2011 in an effort to stop the Islamists from crossing the long, porous border between the two countries and kidnapping people - but their presence achieved the opposite effect, provoking al-Shabab to increase its activity in Kenya, our correspondent adds.