NAIROBI, Kenya — The gunmen who attacked an upscale mall in Kenya’s capital, killing at least 67 people, probably died in the attack, an FBI official has said.
Al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab militants claimed responsibility for the Sept. 21 attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall. Al-Shabab said the attack was in retaliation for Kenya sending troops to Somalia to fight the militants.
Dennis Brady, the FBI legal attaché in Nairobi, said in an interview posted Friday on the bureau’s website: “We believe, as do the Ken-yan authorities, that the four gunmen inside the mall were killed.”
“Our ERT (Evidence Response Team) made significant finds, and there is no evidence that any of the attackers escaped from the area where they made their last stand,” he said.
A very secure crime-scene perimeter made an escape unlikely, he said.
“Additionally, had the attackers escaped, it would have been publicly celebrated and exploited for propaganda purposes by al-Shabab. That hasn’t happened,” he said in the posted interview.
Kenyan authorities say they have recovered the charred remains of bodies thought to be those of the attackers.
A New York Police Department report on the attack raised the possibility the gunmen might have escaped.
FBI officials were on the scene from the first day, and their role was to facilitate, enable and assist the Ken-yan investigation and prosecution, Brady said.
The crime scene after the attack was “very complicated,” he said, because in the process of fighting the attackers, there were explosions and a fire that continued to burn, eventually causing part of the four-story structure to collapse into a pit that smoldered for weeks.
“It was a very difficult place to work,” he said.
