Nairobi hotel attack a grim reminder of spectre of the terrorism which hangs over Kenya

The attack on the hotel complex in Nairobi raises the spectre of the siege at the Westgate shopping mall five-and-a-half years ago which left 67 people dead and 200 injured. The gunfire and explosions which echoed in the Kenyan capital were also a grim reminder of the terrorist threat which hangs over the country.

Al-Shabaab in next-door Somalia claimed they had carried out the attack, which appears to have left at least several people dead. The same al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist group were responsible for Westgate, and, two years later, massacred 148 people, mostly students, at Garissa University College in the east of the country.

Tuesday also marks the third anniversary of an al-Shabaab attack on the El Adde military base in Somalia in which more than 140 Kenyan soldiers, part of an international force, were killed and the assault came a day after three men were committed for trial by a Nairobi magistrates court over the mall atrocity.

The DusitD2 hotel complex tends to have foreigners, including visitors from the west, staying there and the immediate concern was that the gunmen may try to take hostages.

There have been prolonged exchanges of fire outside the building with security forces amid reports of four gunmen, and at least one suicide bomber, in green “uniform type” clothing getting inside the building in the affluent Westlands area.

Joseph Boinnet, the inspector general of the Kenyan National Police Service, said a number of the assailants may still be inside the complex and a special forces unit has been sent in after them. Police officers reported seeing dead bodies in restaurants and offices. Several dozen people, some injured, have been evacuated.

The security forces appeared to have moved relatively quickly following initial reports of gunfire in the afternoon. They had faced severe criticism over their slow reaction and other shortcomings during the Westgate assault and extensive training had taken place subsequently with western, including American and British, forces.

But questions will be asked about a lack of intelligence on the attack. Kenyan security officials told me last week in Nairobi that the terrorism threat was under control.

I was there after visits to Somalia and South Sudan, two countries experiencing prolonged conflicts, and there was certainly no overt sign of impending violence in the Kenyan capital.

However, outside Nairobi, I met two former members of al-Shabaab who had crossed into Kenya from Somalia. The men, Somalis with European connections, claimed they had deserted after becoming disillusioned with the Islamist group. However, their presence in Kenya, they intimated, had been organised by a network of Islamist sympathisers.

The latest attack comes during political upheaval in Somalia following the arrest by the government in Mogadishu of Mukhtar Robow, the former deputy leader of al-Shabaab, and one of the founders of the Islamist group, who had defected 18 months earlier.

The UN special envoy to Somalia, Nicholas Haysom, was expelled after questioning the arrest of Mr Robow, who was running for a regional presidency, which in turn led to Gavin Williamson, the British defence secretary, cancelling a visit to Mogadishu and a meeting with Somalian president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed.

Mr Robow’s arrest was viewed by western officials as a blow against getting others in the Islamist hierarchy to lay down the gun and join the political process in a country kept afloat by western aid. Mr Robow, who had fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, is the most senior member of the group to change sides in a project to “turn” extremists, a scheme the UK had played a part in putting together.

Violence continues in Somalia. New Year’s day was greeted with a mortar attack on Mogadishu airport. A fortnight earlier 62 al-Shabaab fighters were killed, the US announced, in 48 hours of airstrikes. There were three car bombs in the capital three weeks before that, an attack that followed soon after 20 deaths from a truck packed with explosives. A number of government officials were assassinated in the months before.

I was told in Mogadishu, however, that by Somali standards, the scale of strife was diminishing. Al-Shabaab has been losing territory as well as fighters. But the numbers of bombings and assaults by small teams of fighters have increased drastically.

The Nairobi attack shows that al-Qaeda’s east African affiliate retain the capability of bringing that form of urban terrorism to states beyond the Somali border.