One year after the world was shocked by a brazen attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, HBO has produced a documentary film with chilling inside peeks into the battle at Westgate.
The acclaimed Documentary Film titled, "Terror at the Mall" will be broadcasted by CNN/U.S. on Friday, Sept. 26
Sometime shortly after noon on Sept. 21, 2013, Al-Shabaab, an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group from Somalia, attacked Westgate Mall in Nairobi.
The chilling story of the 49 harrowing hours that followed is told from the vantage point of witnesses and rescuers to the attack, film from more than 100 security cameras revealing hours of previously unaired surveillance video, and photos from survivors taken during the attack.
“That Saturday was really a normal Saturday, like any other Saturday,” recalls survivor Amber Prior, who was at the mall with her six-year-old daughter and four-year-old son.
Witnesses recall that gunfire quickly followed a loud explosion. Chaos reigned in the early moments of the siege, with frightened shoppers running for their lives, unsure of the origin of the attack.
“People are confused, they don’t know where to go, stepping on each other,” recalls Valentine Kadzo.
Harveen Sihra, a 15-year-old girl who was shot multiple times during the siege, recalls the gunman’s ominous words: “The only thing he said was that we are here to kill. You killed our people in Somalia. We normally don’t kill women and children but you kill ours in Somalia and so we are here to take revenge.”
Outside the mall, 45 minutes after the attack began, there still was no response by law enforcement authorities as Kenyan security forces remained outside trying to decide how to proceed.
A handful of plainclothes police officers and civilians took matters into their own hands, and a shootout began between the terrorists and the small team of rescuers.
“Everybody’s close to each other. We don’t know each other, we all come from different communities. But at that time, we were one,” recalls Kadzo.
The terrorists released a few hostages who professed the Islamic faith, but many Muslims, like popular Kenyan radio host Ruhila Adatia-Sood, who was seven months pregnant, were killed.
“What angered me the most was the fact that [the terrorists] were Muslims, and they were purporting to do whatever they were doing in the name of Islam,” says civilian Abdul Haji, who joined the rescue effort with only a registered handgun.
Three and a half hours after the terrorists first struck, a police SWAT team finally entered the mall, but by then the massacre was over and many of the wounded had succumbed to their injuries. And, in the initial confusion, Kenyan army and S.W.A.T. team responders mistakenly fired at each other, leaving one police officer dead.
When both groups left the mall just 90 minutes after their arrival, the terrorists relaxed at the back of Nakumatt’s furniture storeroom, praying and waiting for the arrival of Kenya’s military forces.
The standoff between the terrorists and the army lasted 40 more hours, during which five soldiers were killed.
Two days after the terrorists struck,the army launched a high explosive shell into a mall store with the last remaining four terrorists. All four were incinerated; parts of Westgate Mall burned to the ground.
Al-Shabaab had a victorious message of its own, proclaiming in a video: “We want to send a message to unbelievers. We entered Westgate and wreaked havoc. God willing, there will be more Westgates. We have hundreds more volunteers.”
Sixty-seven civilians were killed during the attack; hundreds were wounded. To date, Westgate Mall remains closed with no plans to reopen.
Courtesy: CNN
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