DHAKA: Gunmen who massacred at least 67 people in Kenya’s Westgate mall in September were special suicide commandos.

Somalia’s Shebab insurgents said on Tuesday, rubbishing reports the men had tried to escape, reports The Straits Times.

Members of a ‘martyrdom brigade’, the gunmen were ‘brothers who have volunteered to enter into enemy ranks and cause havoc before being killed by the enemy’, the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab said in the latest issue of their online magazine.

While not specifically saying they had died, the Shebab dismissed initial reports by Kenya’s army chief Julius Karangi that the men had attempted to flee.

‘Karangi even had the audacity to claim that the martyrdom-seeking mujahedeen were seeking to abscond and escape from the mall,’ read the magazine.

BDST: 1619 HRS, NOV 12, 2013
RoR/BSK