147 Dead in Attack on Kenyan University

A Kenya Defence Forces soldier stands guard before they ended a siege by gunmen in the university campus of the northeastern town of Garissa on April 2, 2015. At least 70 students were massacred when Somalia's Shebab Islamist group attacked a Kenyan university today, the interior minister said, the deadliest attack in the country since US embassy bombings in 1998.
Photo: Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images

On early Thursday, al-Shabab gunmen affiliated with al Qaeda opened fire on a university campus in northeastern Kenya. By the end of the day, 147 people were dead, including two police officers, one soldier, two watchmen, and four of the attackers. Most of the casualties in the deadliest attack the country has seen in decades were students. The shooters targeted non-Muslims. One student told the Associated Press, “If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot. With each blast of the gun, I thought I was going to die.” In 2013, al-Shabab gunmen attacked a shopping mall in Nairobi for four days, and 67 people were killed.