Nairobi eye-witness: Civilians barricaded themselves in shops, theatres

The biggest challenge faced by the military forces while countering the terror attack in Nairobi’s Westgate Mall was the lack of knowledge about either the number of gunmen present or where they were camping inside the mall, said Tyler Hicks, a photojournalist with The New York Times, who entered the mall with the security forces and documented the events unfolding inside for two hours. In an interview to the NYT, Hicks said that he was in an adjacent mall when the terrorists attacked the mall. He immediately moved to Westgate and entered the premises with the security forces. [caption id=“attachment_1125915” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A civilian injured in the attack. AFP.[/caption] He said that he didn’t spot any terrorist in his two-hour stay but came across several injured civilians and bodies of those who had died in the attack. The priority of the security forces, he said in the interview, was to rescue the civilians stuck inside and then move from one section of the mall to another. Hicks said:

“Military forces didn’t know where the militants were, so they continued to sweep through looking for them. Of course, there was the concern of I.E.D.’s or that they would throw a grenade or shoot. In the shopping mall, there was an endless amount of places that they could hide or potentially attack from.”

He added that several of the people trapped inside the mall had set up barricades themselves and were hiding inside shops, inside cafes and movie theatres and the injured were wailing for help. He said that the nature of these attacks are same everywhere - be it Afghanistan, Pakistan or Kenya - and unarmed civilians fall prey to these terrorists in the same ways. Describing the scene inside the mall he said:

“There were many civilians who had barricaded themselves inside shops, inside the movie theater, inside restaurants, inside a beauty salon — it seemed like everywhere you went, there were more people who just appeared out of the woodwork.”

Read Tyler Hicks’ complete interview here.