Christians targeted in violent attack on a Kenyan university college

Christians targeted in violent attack on a Kenyan university college, which saw 148 people slaughtered
By Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST and the ASSIST News Service
GARISSA, KENYA (ANS – April 4, 2015) — The militants who slaughtered 147 people in a Kenyan school on Thursday, appeared to have planned extensively, even targeting a site where Christians had gone to pray, a survivor said Friday.
According to media reports, he masked attackers — strapped with explosives and armed with AK-47s — singled out non-Muslim students at Garissa University College and then gunned them down without mercy, survivors said. The gunmen took dozens of hostages in a dormitory as they battled troops and police before the operation ended after about 15 hours, witnesses said.
Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamoud Raghe said fighters from the Somalia-based extremist group were responsible. The al-Qaeda-linked group has been blamed for a series of attacks in Kenya, including the siege at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013 that killed 67 people, as well as other violence in the north.
The group has vowed to retaliate against Kenya for sending troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the militants staging cross-border attacks and kidnappings.
According to CBC News (http://www.cbc.ca ) -- the masked attackers, singled out non-Muslim students at Garissa University College and then gunned them down without mercy, survivors said. Others ran for their lives with bullets whistling through the air.
“Amid the massacre, the men took dozens of hostages in a dormitory as they battled troops and police before the operation ended after about 15 hours, witnesses said,” said their story.
In a separate story, CBC News added that Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Saturday, April 4, 2015, that those behind an attack in were “deeply embedded” in Kenya, and called on Kenyan Muslims to help prevent radicalization.
His televised speech in response to Thursday's 15-hour siege at the Garissa university campus came after the Interior Ministry said five suspects in the assault had been detained, some while trying to flee to Somalia.
Four suspects were Kenyans of Somali origin, and the fifth was Tanzanian, the ministry said.
The suspected mastermind, Mohamed Mohamud, a former teacher at a Garissa madrassa, is still on the run. Kenya has offered a $215,000 US reward for his arrest.
In an audio message soon after, a Shabab spokesman, Ali Mohamoud Raghe, said the attack had been carried out because “the Christian government of Kenya has invaded our country,” a reference to the Kenyan military’s 2011 incursion into Somalia to oust the Shabab from its strongholds.
He said the university had been targeted because it was educating many Christian students in “a Muslim land under colony,” a reference to the large Somali population in a part of Kenya that Somalia once tried to claim. He called the university part of Kenya’s “plan to spread their Christianity and infidelity.”
Meanwhile, the Religious Liberty Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance, has issued a statement in which it says, “Let’s Eradicate Terrorism in Response to Killing of Christian Students in Kenya.”
The statement says, “We condemn the cowardly, senseless, inhuman, targeted killing of innocent Christian students at Kenya’s Garissa University College by masked gunmen from the Al-Shabaab terror group this week. But let’s not stop there, and see this attack as the last straw.
“We were at a loss of words as we heard the news of attackers with explosives and AK-47s targeting a campus site where Christians had gone to pray on Thursday. This deep sorrow should now impel us to defeat terrorism in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.”
Then Executive Director Godfrey Yogarajah said,“We cannot look at terrorism in isolation, be it Kenya or Somalia or Iraq or Syria. Al-Shabaab, which claimed responsibility for the shameless killing, as well as groups like al-Qaeda, Islamic State (ISIS) and Boko Haram are transnational terror groups or aspire to become one, and appear to be either cooperating or competing with each other in revealing their evil intent.”
Kenya shares a long, porous border (435 miles) with Somalia and has long suffered from instability in its neighborhood. Kenya also has several coastal towns, which can facilitate movements of terrorists from Somalia. Al-Shabaab controls southern parts of Somalia, where the common border exists.
Al-Shabaab has a Kenyan affiliate, called al Hijra, which exploits perceptions among sections of Muslims about their marginalization by the primarily Christian administration of President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Al-Shabaab has been seeking to retaliate for Kenya’s decision to send troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the terror group. It is estimated that Al-Shabaab killed at least 400 people and injured over 1,000 in more than 100 attacks between 2011 and 2014.
The same terror group also attacked Nairobi’s Westgate Mall on Sept. 21, 2013, leaving at least 68 dead and 175 wounded. This week’s attack was even more brutal.
“It’s an unfortunate race among terror groups to cause destruction of human lives to maintain their relevance at a time when ISIS is causing unprecedented bloodshed. This trend demands that the international coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria should expand their mission to include other terror groups as their targets – of course, not with airstrikes or troops on the ground,” Yogarajah added.
“World leaders should join hands to defeat terrorism by cooperating with each other and treating the end of terrorism in every country as a common objective.”
The statement added, "The United States gives millions of dollars as military and financial aid to Kenya to help fight terrorism, and can, therefore, have a say in how Kenya counters the threat from Al-Shabaab. And Kenya seems to be going the wrong way.”
Godfrey Yogarajah then said, “We, as Christians, believe in the power of prayer, and we must be on our knees for the victims and survivors and the governments and the international organizations that are committed to sincerely help eradicate terrorism.”
Photo captions: 1) Kenyan soldiers and ambulance workers responding to the attack by Somali militants at Garissa University College. (Photo Credit Dai Kurokawa/European Pressphoto Agency) 2) President Uhuru Kenyatta responding to the attack on TV) 3) A member of the security forces escorts a student off the campus of Garissa University College after an attack by Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab gunmen, April 2, 2015. (Photo credit: AFP/Carl de Souza)
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