The Al-Shabaab jihadist group which claimed the responsibility of the deadly terror attack on a Nairobi in Kenya said on Wednesday that it carried out the attack in retaliation for US President Donald Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the SITE monitoring group reportedly said. The group said in a statement picked up by the SITE that its fighters stormed the DusitD2 complex on instructions by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, news agency AFP reported.
AFP quoted the group as saying “It is a response to the witless remarks of the US president, Donald Trump, and his declaration of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the capital of Israel.”
On Tuesday Nairobi’s posh hotel and office complex witnessed horrifying scenes as unidentified stormed and occupied the upmarket hotel and opened fire on people.
The police said the attacks were carried out in a coordinated fashion, with an explosion that targeted three vehicles outside a bank, followed by a suicide blast in the foyer of the Dusit hotel. An unknown number of gunmen then burst through the complex, leading to a standoff that continued through the night, with people trapped in various parts of the buildings.
Sporadic gunfire and explosions continued till early Wednesday even after all was clear. Officials said that the evacuation was still ongoing in the morning.
Chilling CCTV footage broadcast on local media showed four black-clad, heavily armed men calmly entering the luxury complex on Tuesday afternoon.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Wednesday said that the deadly attack by terrorists on an upscale hotel and office complex in the capital that left at least 14 civilians dead was over and all the attackers had been “eliminated”.
DusitD2 hotel compound is an upmarket cluster of shops and several offices in Nairobi’s affluent Westlands neighbourhood .
More than 700 hotel guests and office workers were evacuated, Kenyatta said in a televised address.