International
Kenyan varsity: Death toll now 79
At least 70 hostages have been killed, and 79 other injured in the attack by al-Shabab Islamist militants on a university in Garissa, north-eastern Kenya, officials say.
The Kenya National Disaster Operation Center, said more than 500 students were rescued from the Garissa University College campus.
Interior Minister Joseph Nkaiserry said four of the attackers had been killed, and security operations were ongoing, as an overnight curfew has been issued in parts of the country.
Four counties near the Kenya-Somalia border, Garissa, Wajir, Mandera and Tana River, would have dusk to dawn curfews imposed, disaster management officials said.
Nine students were critically injured and airlifted to the capital Nairobi for medical treatment, they added.
Mr. Nkaiserry said that “90% of the threat [had] been eliminated”, but security forces were “mopping up the area” in case more gunmen were on the campus.
The Kenyan government earlier named Mohamed Kuno, a high-ranking al-Shabab official, as the mastermind of the attack. It placed a bounty of $217,000 (£140,000) on him.
A BBC report said Kuno was headmaster at an Islamic school in Garissa before he quit in 2007. He goes by the nickname “Dulyadeyn”, which means “long-armed one” in Somali.
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