The crisis in Kenya continues after two Islamic rebels died on Monday during rescue operations carried out by the country's military in an attempt to rescue the hostages trapped inside the Westgate mall in Nairobi since last Saturday.
According to Mexican newspaper El Universal, in the last report Monday, the number of people killed in the Sept. 21 attack carried out by Islamic militia Al-Shabab has risen to 69, while 63 people are still missing, according to the Kenyan Red Cross.
The members of the Somali radical group are entrenched in a casino on the top floor of the mall and it's estimated that they still hold 10 to 15 hostages.
According to an article published on Monday by newspaper El Financiero, in the third day of the Kenyan hostage crisis, among the dead victims are British, French, Canadian, Indian, Ghanian, South African and Chinese citizens.
Who are the attackers?
At noon on Saturday, one of the peak hours in the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya, a group of men dressed in black and armed to the teeth entered the mall and threw grenades while shooting at people.
That moment unleashed one of the worst attacks against civilians on Kenyan soil in recent times; radical organization Al-Shabab took responsibility for the attack, claiming it is a reprisal over the presence of the Kenyan Armed Forces in Somalia, as a part of a United Nations operation that supports the Somali government to destabilize Islamic militias in the region, according to El Mundo.
The same source reports that Al-Shabab merged with Al-Qaeda in February 2012, and their ranks are comprised of various nationalities.
The attacks against the Kenyan population have shocked the international community, and the leaders of many nations, among them U.S. President Barack Obama, who assured that the U.S. government is providing the best possible support to Kenya, according to the BBC.
"What these people are doing has nothing to do with religion. Righteous Muslims would never do this. Suicide is a sin in Islam. Killing is a sin. In Islam, we don't, even if it's war, in wars you don't hurt children, you don't hurt women", declared a Kenyan citizen, quoted by the BBC.
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