From CNN:
Gunmen attacked an upscale shopping mall in the Kenyan capital on Saturday, leading to a fierce gunbattle with police and leaving dozens of casualties.
The Kenyan Red Cross reported 20 dead, though a government official, Joseph Ole Lenku, only confirmed 11.
Fifty more people were wounded in the attack at the mall in Nairobi, said Abbas Gullet, head of the Kenyan Red Cross.
A security agent told CNN’s Lillian Leposo at the scene that the violence was a terrorist attack, but officials had yet to confirm that information, Leposo told CNN.
“They have strong reason that these men are terrorists,” Leposo said.
One American inside the mall parking lot described hiding in stairwell with several people, including two persons with superficial gunshot wounds, for more than an hour while the shooting was occurring, she told CNN.
Sara Head of Washington, D.C. was in Kenya on business when she and her colleague were driven into the parking lot by their driver, she said. When they heard gunfire, they crawled underneath cars and hid behind them. They then ran into the stairwell, she said.
“There were several of us in there, but there were two people bleeding,” she said.
Eventually, she and others in the stairwell saw the lights turned back on in the stairwell and the door to a nearby supermarket open, so they all escaped the mall through the supermarket and its loading dock.
“There was blood throughout the supermarket as we exited, on the floor,” she said.
Frightened visitors to the mall didn’t even know whether it was safe to escape.
“It wasn’t clear that it was okay to exit. I was sort of sheep following,” she said.
The gunmen shot one person inside his car and two more people on the street as they entered the mall area, Leposo said.
