Officers who risked all in raid that left 67 dead

Security personnel and journalists hide behind a vehicle during the Westgate mall attack in Nairobi. [PHOTO: FILE]

Nairobi, Kenya: The crackle of the police radio rudely interrupted Ali Nur and his team of flying squad officers on duty on September 21 last year. Nur and his team were at a Buru Buru restaurant just settling down to a lunch before heading out for the afternoon shift.

“It was chapati and fry for me,” Nur, a father of seven with over a quarter century of experience in the police force recalls, “I had taken two bites into my food when the police radio chatter came through about a shooting.”

It was the excitement and voice of urgency over the radio that astounded him, but he also realised the location of the shooting was not in his jurisdiction. He wiped his hands, grabbed the police radio and walked outside to listen. “I heard the urgent request for all available officers to report to a robbery and shooting in progress at the Westgate mall,” he says.

What Nur did not know at that time was that the frantic voice on the radio was that of Deputy Police Commissioner Wilfred Mbithi, based at the Police Headquarters Command Centre off Ngong Road.

FRANTIC CALL

Nur rushed back to the restaurant, grabbed his phone from the table and ordered his men to leave their food and follow him.

The four got into their unmarked patrol car with headlights on and headed out towards Westgate mall. But they ran into heavy and frustrating traffic along Jogoo road that required ingenuity and unorthodox means to maneuvre.

“The patrol car had no siren so my men used their guns and police radios through the windows to wave cars out of the way,” recalls Nur. “It worked.”

In another part of the city at about the same time, Chief Inspector Stephen Lelei, then an officer commanding Kabete police station was looking ahead to a quiet Saturday when his phone rang.

The caller was an Uthiru based taxi driver and he sounded upset. “He told me his brother had just been shot inside the Westgate mall by men he thought looked like Al-Shabaab.”

Lelei’s fears were confirmed when he monitored the police radio and the chatter astonished him. Reports of non-stop shooting inside the mall filtered through confirming this was not going to be a quiet afternoon after all.

“I got together about three officers and we bunched into the police car and sped off on Waiyaki way towards the mall.”

By the time Lelei and his team arrived at about 12.45pm, Nur and his men had already driven down the road leading to the mall and were horrified by what they saw. “There were at least six bodies lying on the road. But there were people streaming out of the mall and their faces look traumatised. Others had been shot. We could hear the non-stop shooting.”

A woman of European descent walked out of the mall with her son and they were pulling a shopping cart. Inside was a child who had been shot. Nur and Inspector Lelei helped her lift the shopping cart down the steps and out of the line of fire.

“She was walking like a zombie. We asked her how she survived. She told us her son had told one of the attackers he was a very bad man, and the terrorist had decided to demonstrate they were not monsters by letting her and children out alive,” recalls Nur.

Nur says it was the first time he realised this was no ordinary robbery. “If they were robbers, why shoot civilians? That is when it hit me this was terrorism.”

The anguished faces of fleeing shoppers and the continuous shooting made for a terrifying combination that jolted many of the confused officers now converging at the mall’s front entrance.

What was most frustrating, Nur says, was that there was no central command. The officers did not even know each other and they did not have a map of the building. It was like marching into a trap blind.

They identified each other with their weapons. What followed was a brief mind game. Who would be the bravest to enter the battlefield and risk the bullets bouncing off the building's pillars and floors.

Lelei says when he arrived, he spotted Nur and Abdul Haji (police reservist), Harish (police reservist) and Police Officer Karani. Nur stood out with his AK47 weapon and the trio were joined by other Asian police reservists from the local community.

Lelei made the first call. He asked the nine officers to identify themselves by station and rank. He then picked volunteers from the flying squad (Nur), reservists (Haji and Harish) and five other officers who joined the group. A decision was made to enter the building through the parking garage and start clearing from the top floor coming down.

Nur, armed with a pistol tucked in his waistband and an AK47 says the gunfire and bodies piled at the entrance, made entry through the front a very risky decision. “Somebody suggested we enter the building through the parking lot instead.”

It was in the same parking lot that Lelei saw legs protruding from underneath a car. “It was a taxi driver who had been shot. His brother had called me. He was hiding under the car. We led him outside and handed him over to medical personnel who had now arrived.”

Nur says the team moved methodically up the driving ramp further up into the building. The cooking competition venue at the parking lot provided the first eveidence of the attackers demonic designs, Lelei says. “We first encountered two unexploded grenades on our way up which we covered with rocks to ensure nobody stepped on them.”

The bodies at the cooking competition venue told them the attackers had been there and left. So the trio moved stealthily down to the third floor and then finally the second floor where they first encountered the attackers.

 

“Along the way, we found hostages trapped in stores or hiding. We would identify ourselves as police officers and lead them out of the mall. I believe that the action of the first officers helped  save hundreds of lives. The death toll would have been far much higher,” says Nur.

Nur says on the second level they found two attackers, armed to the teeth, and fierce exchange of gunfire rent the air. Lelei left the group to load his gun when he found some officers at the entrance.

“Ingieni! Ingieni! (come in)” he yelled at the them. Nobody moved.

The gunfire-exchange continued. Lelei remembers one horrible moment when he spotted a couple cornered outside a store by an attacker. He was pinned behind a pillar trying to make out where the attackers were. He says he realised much later that the couple was Uhuru’s nephew Mbugua Mwangi and his fiancée Rosemary Wahito.

He recalls watching in horror as the gunman fired eight bullets into Mbugua. “The woman stood up and started running. The gunman fired at her felling her.”

The pinpoint accuracy of the attackers and the fact that they had nothing to lose but their lives made the task even more complex. It was a game of rescuing hostages and trying to eliminate the terrorists.

Lelei says he took his position next to Nur and returned fire. Moments later he heard Nur scream and turned around. The worst had happened.

Nur remembers feeling a sensation of hot metal going into his body as a bullet ricocheted off the pillar and struck his stomach. Reuters Chief Photographer for East Africa Goran Tomasevic snapped the iconic image of that tragic moment.

Nur tried to belly crawl to safety as he felt exposed. He was also holding his stomach and the wound looked bad. Before he knew it three more bullets hit, two in his back and one in his right thigh.

“At that moment all I wanted to do was to get out of there and go to a hospital,” he recalls. He recalls getting help from Goran and other officers who escorted him to the Red Cross staff where he was put in an ambulance and driven to Aga Khan hospital. But his drama was not quite over.

In the meantime, Lelei says the battle with the attackers became fierce and more intense, “We returned fire and pinned them inside Nakumatt. We engaged one of the attackers and shot him inside the supermarket but his colleague pulled his body away,” he says.

A police source believes the attacker was killed and his body dumped inside the supermarket freezer by a fellow attacker.

TERROR SUSPECT

Lelei says he was later stunned to realise that all this time he had been shot, right through his calf. “Luckily the bullet had not hit my bones, just my flesh.”

Looking back, Lelei says the biggest obstacle was lack of a unified command structure and not having any knowledge of the mall’s layout. “My own theory is that there were possibly more than four attackers and that the bigger group left the mall immediately after the shooting started and left the four.”

Meanwhile, Nur was in agony getting medical attention. He started chanting the Muslim shahada (prayer). His chanting caught the attention of hospital staff who gave him a suspicious look. Could he possibly be one of the terrorists?

By the time Nur regained consciousness, he woke up to find himself surrounded by heavily armed officers and their menacing look told him he was in trouble. What saved him was his work identification card.