Son of government official was among gunmen in Kenya massacre

The son of a Kenyan government official has been identified as one of the al-Shabaab gunmen who killed nearly 150 university students in the northeast of the country on Thursday, the interior ministry said on Sunday.

Spokesman Mwenda Njoka said Abdirahim Abdullahi was one of the four gunmen who attacked the Garissa University college campus on Thursday, killing almost 150 people

“The father had reported to security agents that his son had disappeared from home... and was helping the police try to trace his son by the time the Garissa terror attack happened,” Njoka told Reuters in a text message.

The claim came as Kenyan churches hired armed guards to protect their Easter congregations out of fear that they could be targeted on Easter Sunday. At one church in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa, worshippers were evacuated and a bomb disposal unit deployed due to a suspicious vehicle parked outside the church.

President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday said the planners and financiers of Islamist attacks were “deeply embedded” within Kenyan communities and urged Muslims to do more to fight radicalization. A Garissa-based official said the government was aware Abdullahi, a former University of Nairobi law student, had joined the militant group al Shabaab after graduating in 2013.

Al Shabaab group said the assault on Garissa, some 200km (120 miles) from the Somali border, was revenge for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to fight alongside African Union peacekeepers against the al Qaeda-aligned group.

The group is aligned to al-Qaida and has threatened to turn Kenyan cities “red with blood” with more attacks. Police have stepped up security at shopping malls and public buildings in the capital Nairobi, and in the eastern coastal region which has been prone to al-Shabaab attacks.

The Garissa assault has further strained the historically cordial relations between Kenya's Christian and Muslim communities, which have deteriorated due to frequent Islamist attacks on Christian priests and churches.