Kenya's Garissa University College attack by Al Shabaab

At least 15 people were killed on Thursday when Islamist militant group al Shabaab stormed a Kenyan university campus in the town of Garissa taking Christians hostage and engaging security forces in an extended shootout, Reuters reports.

With scores of students wounded and hundreds unaccounted for, police and soldiers surrounded Garissa University College. They sealed off the compound and were trying to flush out the gunmen, Kenyan police chief Joseph Boinet said. Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn attack near the Somali border. The group has links to al Qaeda and a record of raids on Kenyan soil in retaliation for Nairobi sending troops to fight it in its home state of Somalia.

Authorities offered a 20 million shilling ($215,000) reward for information leading to the arrest of a man called Mohamed Mohamud, described as "most wanted" and linked to the attack. Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, Al Shabaab's military operations spokesman, said it was holding many Christian hostages inside. "We sorted people out and released the Muslims," he told Reuters. "Fighting still goes on inside the college."

Boinet said the attackers had "shot indiscriminately" while inside the university compound. At least 14 people had been killed, including two security personnel, a policeman at the scene said, while the Red Cross said 50 students had been freed.

One image provided by a local journalist shows a dozen blood-soaked bodies strewn across a single unversity classroom, raising the likelihood that the death toll will rise significantly when the security services clear other al Shabaab-held parts of the campus.

Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said 280 of the 815 students at the university had been accounted for and efforts were under way to track down the others, according to the Twitter feed of Kenya's national disaster agency. It did not say how many students remained trapped on the campus.

Some had managed to escape unaided. "We heard some gunshots and we were sleeping so it was around 5am and guys started jumping up and down running for their lives," an unnamed student told Reuters TV.

Sixty-five people were wounded, the disaster agency said. Four had been airlifted to Nairobi for treatment. "We have 49 casualties so far, all with bullet and (shrapnel) wounds," said a doctor at Garissa hospital. Al Shabaab, which seeks to impose its own harsh version of sharia law, has separated Muslims from Christians in some of its previous raids in Kenya, notably late last year in attacks on a bus and at a quarry.

(source: Reuters)