Soldiers told of the horrific torture
meted out by terrorists in the Nairobi mall massacre yesterday with
claims hostages were dismembered, had their eyes gouged out and were
left hanging from hooks in the ceiling.
Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed with pliers before being blinded and hanged.
Children were found dead in the food court fridges with knives still embedded in their bodies, it was claimed.
Most of the defeated terrorists,
meanwhile, were reportedly discovered ‘burnt to ashes’, set alight by
the last extremist standing to try to protect their identities.
The
horrifying details came yesterday as the first pictures emerged from
within the wreckage of the building, showing piles of bodies left strewn
across the floor.
A third of the mall was destroyed in the battle between terrorists and Kenyan troops.
Lying in the rubble are feared to be
the bodies of as many as 71 civilians who have been declared missing by
the Kenyan Red Cross.
With
detectives, including the FBI and the Metropolitan Police, still unable
to reach the wrecked part of the mall for fear of setting off
explosives, it could take up to a week to determine exactly who is still
inside.
Yesterday, soldiers and doctors who
were among the first people into the mall after it was reclaimed on
Tuesday, spoke of the horrifying scenes inside.
‘You find people with hooks hanging from the roof,’ said one Kenyan doctor, who asked not to be named.
‘They
removed eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a
pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood.
‘They drive knives inside a child’s body.
'Actually
if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping,
fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers. Here it was
pain.’
A soldier, who took
pictures at a bread counter and at the ArtCaffe, said he was so
traumatised by what he saw he has had to seek counselling.
Bomb
disposal experts with sniffer dogs were yesterday painstakingly combing
the part of the building still standing for explosives before clearing
forensic officers, police and troops to search for bodies.
Images also emerged yesterday revealing the true
extent of the destruction caused to the centre during
the four-day battle between Kenyan forces and Islamic militants.
The first pictures taken inside the site show a gaping hole in the mall's roof after three storeys collapsed when Kenyan soldiers fired rocket-propelled grenades inside the complex,
knocking out a support column, a government official said.
Children's buggies are left abandoned just metres from the yawning pit, as cars
hang precariously over the edge. Beneath many more
vehicles lie on top of each other, smashed to pieces.
The
collapse happened on Monday when government troops launched a massive
assault on the mall where up to 150 people are thought to have been
killed.
During the
firefight, hostages reportedly had their throats slashed from ear to ear
and were thrown screaming from third-floor balconies as the siege came
to a bloody end. Forensics teams, still sifting through the mountains of
rubble, fear many more bodies are yet to be found.
Shell-shocked
Kenyan troops said the inside of the Israeli-run mall resembled a
‘scene from a horror movie’ with blood spattered everywhere and dead
bodies strewn across the floor.
One soldier told the Daily Mirror: 'I have seen many bad things, but this will haunt me for the rest of my days.'
The
main thrust of the operation began at 6am on Monday when troops and
helicopters surrounded the building, but their efforts were hampered by
an Al Shabaab sniper who managed to pin them back for nearly 24 hours.
As
tear gas was used to try to flush him out, another terrorist reportedly
blew himself up. It is believed the resulting fire may have killed
dozens of shoppers in a supermarket.
The
following day, the soldiers were ordered to adopt a 'shoot to kill'
policy and launched their final attack on the terror group on the roof
of the mall at 5pm.
The mall was retaken about half an hour later.
source : UK Daily
