The son of a Kenyan government official was one of the masked
attackers who killed nearly 150 at a university last week, the Kenyan
Ministry of the Interior said yesterday, as Kenyan churches hired armed
guards to protect their Easter congregations.
Pope Francis decried Thursday’s attack in his Easter Sunday service, praying for those killed by militant attackers who hunted down Christians while sparing Muslims.
At one church in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa, worshipers were evacuated and a bomb disposal unit deployed due to a suspicious vehicle parked outside the church.
Ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said Abdirahim Abdullahi, son of a government official in the northern Mandera county bordering Somalia, was one of four attackers who stormed the college campus in northeastern town of Garissa.
“The father had reported to security agents that his son had disappeared from home ... and was helping the police try to trace his son by the time the Garissa terror attack happened,” Njoka said.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday said the planners and financiers of militant attacks were “deeply embedded” within Kenyan communities and urged Muslims to do more to fight radicalization.
A Garissa-based official said the government was aware that Abdullahi, a former University of Nairobi law student, had joined the militant group al-Shabaab after graduating in 2013.
“He was a very brilliant student, but then he got these crazy ideas,” the official said.
Al-Shabaab said the assault on Garissa, about 200km from the Somali border, was revenge for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to fight alongside African Union peacekeepers against the al-Qaeda-aligned group.
The militants have threatened to turn Kenyan cities “red with blood” and police have stepped up security at shopping malls and public buildings in the capital, Nairobi, and the eastern coastal region which has been prone to al-Shabaab attacks.
The Garissa assault has further strained the historically cordial relations between Kenya’s Christian and Muslim communities, which have deteriorated due to frequent militant attacks on Christian priests and churches.
Christians make up 83 percent of Kenya’s 44 million population.
Kenyan priests said they feared churches could be targeted on Easter Sunday, the main liturgical feast in the Christian calendar.
In Nairobi’s Holy Family Basilica cathedral, two uniformed police officers armed with AK-47 rifles manned the entrance gate. One officer said more plain-clothes officers were inside.
Three private security guards frisked churchgoers with hand-held metal detectors, while a fourth guard used a mirror to check for explosives underneath cars.
“Everyone is anxious and you never know what will happen next, but we believe the biggest protector is God and we are praying,” said Samuel Wanje, 27, a youth member at the church.
Six soldiers guarded Garissa’s main Christian church and about 100 worshipers ahead of yesterday’s Easter Sunday mass.
The Garissa attack was the most deadly on Kenyan soil since al-Qaeda bombed the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998, killing more than 200 people and wounding thousands of others.
Pope Francis decried Thursday’s attack in his Easter Sunday service, praying for those killed by militant attackers who hunted down Christians while sparing Muslims.
At one church in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa, worshipers were evacuated and a bomb disposal unit deployed due to a suspicious vehicle parked outside the church.
Ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said Abdirahim Abdullahi, son of a government official in the northern Mandera county bordering Somalia, was one of four attackers who stormed the college campus in northeastern town of Garissa.
“The father had reported to security agents that his son had disappeared from home ... and was helping the police try to trace his son by the time the Garissa terror attack happened,” Njoka said.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday said the planners and financiers of militant attacks were “deeply embedded” within Kenyan communities and urged Muslims to do more to fight radicalization.
A Garissa-based official said the government was aware that Abdullahi, a former University of Nairobi law student, had joined the militant group al-Shabaab after graduating in 2013.
“He was a very brilliant student, but then he got these crazy ideas,” the official said.
Al-Shabaab said the assault on Garissa, about 200km from the Somali border, was revenge for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to fight alongside African Union peacekeepers against the al-Qaeda-aligned group.
The militants have threatened to turn Kenyan cities “red with blood” and police have stepped up security at shopping malls and public buildings in the capital, Nairobi, and the eastern coastal region which has been prone to al-Shabaab attacks.
The Garissa assault has further strained the historically cordial relations between Kenya’s Christian and Muslim communities, which have deteriorated due to frequent militant attacks on Christian priests and churches.
Christians make up 83 percent of Kenya’s 44 million population.
Kenyan priests said they feared churches could be targeted on Easter Sunday, the main liturgical feast in the Christian calendar.
In Nairobi’s Holy Family Basilica cathedral, two uniformed police officers armed with AK-47 rifles manned the entrance gate. One officer said more plain-clothes officers were inside.
Three private security guards frisked churchgoers with hand-held metal detectors, while a fourth guard used a mirror to check for explosives underneath cars.
“Everyone is anxious and you never know what will happen next, but we believe the biggest protector is God and we are praying,” said Samuel Wanje, 27, a youth member at the church.
Six soldiers guarded Garissa’s main Christian church and about 100 worshipers ahead of yesterday’s Easter Sunday mass.
The Garissa attack was the most deadly on Kenyan soil since al-Qaeda bombed the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998, killing more than 200 people and wounding thousands of others.
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