Kenyan forces kill all four militants involved in Nairobi hotel attack

Kenya’s president has said security forces have killed all four militants who stormed a hotel and office complex in Nairobi, in an attack that killed at least 14 people.

Uhuru Kenyatta said early on Wednesday that 14 civilians were confirmed dead and more than 700 others had been safely evacuated.

The attack on the dusitD2 hotel began shortly after 3 pm on Tuesday with an explosion in the parking lot and then a suicide bomb blast in the foyer, police said.

The assault on the hotel compound in the Kenyan capital, which includes a luxury hotel, restaurants, a spa, and several office buildings housing international companies, was the most high-profile by terrorists in the country for many years.

Somali militant Islamist group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack.

Al-Shabaab was responsible for an attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall in 2013 that left at least 67 people dead.

Images from security cameras showed young men in black combat fatigues and loaded belts, armed with AK47s.

Survivors reported hearing a shattering blast and saw people mown down by gunmen as they sat at a cafe. Victims were left lying on tables, bleeding.

In the hours after the attack, the gunmen and security forces were engaged in a fierce firefight. Plumes of smoke rose into the air from several burning cars. “There was a bomb, there is a lot of gunfire,” said one man working at the complex, who asked not to be named.

Tuesday’s attack came exactly three years after an al-Shabaab attack on a Kenyan military base in El Adde in Somalia, in which about 140 Kenya soldiers were killed.

An earlier estimate put the death toll at 15

Eleven Kenyans, an American and a Briton were among the casualties, morgue staff said. Two victims had not been identified.