Westgate Mall Attack
On Saturday, Sept. 21, 10 to 15 armed al-Shabaab militants stormed in to the Kenyan shopping mall in Nairobi according to time.com. Reuters.com reports that the terrorist group who carried out the brutal attack has ties to the terrorist group al-Qaeda, and are battling for Somalia. Reuters also reports al-Shabaab had released several tweets during the siege. One tweet read, “There will be no negotiations whatsoever at #Westgate.”

The attackers stormed into the mall with guns blazing, and innocent civilians fled in terror hiding wherever they could, in shops, bathrooms, and the ventilation, nytimes.com reports. The gunmen were shooting anyone the came across, even women and children. In an nytimes.com interview, Fred Ngoga Gateretse, official of the African Union, said he was sitting at a cafe in the mall when the gunmen stormed into the mall. Eight men stormed into the mall with scarves wrapped around their heads, according to the interview
from nytimes.com. They began to open fire in the mall, as Kenyan police began firing from the balcony the report goes on to say. In a quote from the interview, Gaterestse said, “Believe me, these guys were good shooters. You could tell they were trained.”

The cafe at which Gaterestse was sitting has apparently be warned as a possible location for a terrorist attack. With conflict brewing, it was warned there maybe an attack on the cafe which is owned and operated by Israelis.

They also reported, the attack not only came in from the ground floor, but a second group of gunmen entered the mall at the same time on a different floor. It was released by the media in Kenya that one gunman was shot but later died in a hospital. It is also believed one of the terrorists was a woman.

The nytimes.com also reports, in a radio address the spokesman for the terrorist group al-Shabaab, Ali Mohamoud Rage said, “Kenya will not get peace unless they pull their military out of Somalia.”

Foxnews.com reports that in the aftermath of the violent attack, 67 people were left dead. According to nbcnews.com 6 of those dead were security officers. Also included in nbcnews.com’s report, Kenya’s president stated five of the terrorists have been killed, and 11 more suspects have been taken into custody.

Aftershock in Pakistan
According to a report release by Reuters on Sept. 28, 15 more people loss their lives in an aftershock in Pakistan. The 6.8 magnitude aftershock has already claimed at least 15 lives as of recently. The after shock occurred in the same location as the earthquake which happened on Tuesday, Sept. 24.

The original earthquake had already claimed 515 lives of 15.000 people living in the province of Baluchistan, Reuters reported. Do to the remote location of the province it has become rather difficult to get aid to the area. In the light of the crisis army insurgents have take advantage of the present crisis and have already fired at two aid helicopters, and killed four soldiers who were accompanying the aid convoy the report goes on to say.