Al-Shabaab reportedly claims responsibility for deadly attack on Kenyan college

Al-Shabaab has reportedly claimed responsibility for an attack at Garissa University in eastern Kenya Thursday that has killed at least 15 people and injuring dozens others.

A spokesman for the terror group told the BBC that it attacked the school because “it’s on Muslim land colonized by non-Muslims.”

The spokesman also said the gunmen had separated non-Muslims from Muslims and had freed 15 Muslims. Read more after cut


The attack occurred at 5:30 a.m. during morning prayers at the university mosque, Augustine Algana, a student at the school who survived the attack, told the Associated Press.

Algana said gunfire rang throughout campus while students were still sleeping. He said fighting immediately became more intense, which caused some students to flee the building as the attackers fired upon them.

Algana said he saw at least five men on campus.

A mortuary attendant in Garissa told the Associated Press that at least 15 people have been killed and 60 others were injured. The attendant saw the causalities arrive by ambulance. Authorities said some of the more serious wounded were being flown to Nairobi.

The Kenya Red Cross said on Twitter that 30 casualties were taken to the hospital and four of them were in critical condition. Kenya’s National Disaster Operations center most had gunshot wounds.

The National Disaster Operations Center said on Twitter that three of the four dorms had been evacuated, with the gunmen cornered in one dorm room.

Terrified students sprinted out of buildings as police officers arrived on the scene. The gunmen had opened fire at guards triggering a “fierce shootout” with police guarding student dorms, Kenya’s National Police said in a statement.

The attackers managed to infiltrate the dorms, raising the possibility of hostage-taking.

Abass Gulett, head of the Red Cross in Kenya, said fighting was ongoing as security forces tried to retake some university blocks from the gunmen.

Kenya's northern and eastern regions, which border Somalia, have been plagued by attacks blamed on al-Shabaab, an Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group from Somalia.

The militant group has vowed retribution on Kenya for sending troops into Somalia to fight the militants. Kenya sent its military there in 2011 to fight al-Shabaab following cross-border attacks.

Last month, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for attacks in the county of Mandera on the Somali border in which twelve people died. Four of them died in an attack on the convoy of Mandera County Governor Ali Roba.

Al-Shabaab carried out large-scale attacks in Mandera last year. The militants hijacked a bus and singled out 28 non-Muslims forcing them to lie on the ground before shooting them dead. Ten days later, 36 non-Muslim quarry workers were killed by the extremists.

Police statistics show that 312 people have been killed in al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya from 2012 to 2014. Thirty-eight people were killed and 149 wounded in Garissa in the same period, according to police statistics.