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 Police and soldiers surrounded and sealed off Garissa University
College and were attempting to flush out the gunmen, the head of
Kenya's police force, Joseph Boinet, said.
Al Shabaab, which has links to al Qaeda and a track record of raids
on Kenyan soil, claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn attack, in
which scores were wounded.
Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group's military operations
spokesman, said it was holding many Christian hostages inside.
"We sorted people out and released the Muslims," he told Reuters.
"Fighting still goes on inside the college."
"The attackers shot indiscriminately while inside the university
compound," Boinet said in a statement, adding police had been
guarding the university's four hostels at the time.
At least 14 people had been killed, a policeman at the scene said,
while the Red Cross said 50 students had been freed.
Others managed to escape the compound unaided.
"We heard some gunshots and we were sleeping so it was around five
and guys started jumping up and down running for their lives," an
unnamed student told Reuters TV.
Sixty-five people were wounded, the country's National Disaster
Operation Center said on its Twitter feed. Four had been airlifted
to Nairobi for treatment.
"We have 49 casualties so far, all with bullet and (shrapnel)
wounds," said a doctor at Garissa hospital.
CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS
Al Shabaab, which seeks to impose its own harsh variant of sharia
law, had separated Muslims from Christians in some of its previous
raids in Kenya, notably late last year in attacks on a bus and at a
quarry.
Its repeated raids, together with attacks on churches by home-grown
Islamist groups, have in recent years strained the historically
cordial relations between Kenya's Muslim and Christian communities.
Thursday's attack also marked a setback in a drive by President
Uhuru Kenyatta to persuade foreigners the country is safe to visit.
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On Wednesday, he urged Kenyans abroad to help woo tourists back
despite the wave of militant violence, criticizing a warning from
Australia of a possible attack in Nairobi and an advisory from
Britain urging its citizens to avoid most coastal resorts.
Kenyatta was due to address the nation about the Garissa attack
later on Thursday.
Grace Kai, a student at the Garissa Teachers Training College near
the university, said there had been warnings that an attack in the
town could be imminent.
"Some strangers had been spotted in Garissa town and were suspected
to be terrorists," she told Reuters.
"Then on Monday our college principal told us ...that strangers had
been spotted in our college... On Tuesday we were released to go
home, and our college closed, but the campus remained in session,
and now they have been attacked."
Al Shabaab had previously carried out attacks in Garissa, which lies
around 200 kilometers (120 miles) from the porous Somali border.
Many Kenyans living in the crime-ridden frontier regions blame the
government for not doing enough to protect its citizens from the
militants.
Having declared it would punish Kenya for sending troops into
Somalia to fight it alongside African Union peacekeepers, it was
also responsible for a deadly attack in 2013 on the upscale Westgate
shopping mall in Nairobi.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Akwiri, Edith Honan and Humphrey
Malalo; Writing by John Stonestreet; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
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