( ominous music playing )
Narrator: In September 2013,
al-Shabaab,
an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group from Somalia,
attacked a shopping mall in neighboring Kenya.
More than 100 security cameras recorded the attack,
which left 71 people dead.
Some footage was destroyed by fire...
but much of it survives
and it documents the attack in stark detail.
But it also reveals something else--
the courage and resilience
by which so many ordinary civilians survived
mass murder in a crowded shopping mall.
♪ ♪
Jasmine Postwalla: Westgate was one place where you meet
people of different cultures, different tribes,
different religions, different everything.
I mean, just-- I think that was the most special thing.
♪ ♪
Narrator: At the front of the mall, overlooking the street
were three busy restaurants:
Urban Burger,
Tapas,
and Artcaffe.
Frank: It was the best mall in Nairobi.
It was very up-market.
It's the place where prominent people come.
♪ ♪
Narrator: At the back of the mall was Nakumatt,
a giant supermarket on two floors.
Amber Prior: Nakumatt at Westgate was the premier supermarket in Nairobi.
It had an escalator.
That was a huge thing for Kenya, you know,
to have an escalator inside a supermarket.
It sold everything that you might need
and that was always their tag line: "All under one roof."
Katherine Walton: We'd be there two, three times during the week.
You know, it was more than just a mall to buy, you know, extra stuff.
It was really a part of our lives.
♪ ♪
Amber: That Saturday was really
a normal Saturday like any other Saturday.
I went with my kids--
my daughter Amelie who's six years old,
and my son Elliott who's four.
I was quite excited to do my shop,
because I was doing a big shop and I don't go to Nakumatt very often.
I try to do all my shopping at the local supermarket,
but I was finding stuff you don't normally find, you know.
I'm French and I remember finding Orangina,
which is a drink you get in France and I remember thinking-- getting really excited about it.
Margie: We were planning on getting as many groceries as we could.
We needed to do it relatively quickly,
because I had a little baby
who was eight months old, and he was heading close to naptime.
So it was kinda that shop where we took our time,
but we were thinking, "Okay, baby's gonna lose it soon. He needs to get home."
♪ ♪
Narrator: Opposite Nakumatt's entrance
Valentine Kadzo had set up a display table
for a computer company.
Valentine: I was at Westgate because I was working.
We had a display table.
We have the products,
so that the customer can touch and feel.
♪ ♪
Narrator: A few feet from Valentine's display table
Katherine Walton stopped to make a phone call.
Katherine: The kids just wanted to hang out a bit
and have some lunch.
I have two boys--
a 14-year-old and a 10-year-old--
and then three little girls--
four, two and then 13 months.
Narrator: Katherine's two sons had gone shopping
in the supermarket.
Blaise: We stopped at the drink aisle
'cause I wanted something to drink.
So I tried calling my mom for a few minutes,
then I gave up, and then we went and stood in line.
♪ ♪
Amber: We were there for quite a while.
I think we'd probably already been in Nakumatt for about an hour or so.
Our trolley was full. We were almost finished.
And then I remembered I wanted to get a bottle of wine,
so I actually left the kids by the shopping trolley,
which in Kenya you kind of do,
'cause you don't have that culture of fear of your kids getting kidnapped
or the things like that, so you know that they're quite safe.
Narrator: At 12:30 Andrew Munyua
was at the street entrance to the mall.
I thought of just passing through Westgate,
do a few errands, buy some packed lunch
and then later on pick my boy and come back home, like normal.
You have to go through security check
and I was at the door, when I was being searched
and my hands was raised up.
Katherine: I was just walking in front of Nakumatt
when there was a loud explosion.
Andrew: Bang! ( dramatic music playing )
I realized the guard that
was searching me had now fallen down.
Jon Quail: The grenade went off,
immediately followed by gunfire.
You could see people falling on the floor.
Some were diving for cover,
but some were actually falling.
Andrew: When I dived down,
I decided to touch my chest.
I checked down and I saw there was blood on my fingers.
Narrator: Niall Saville and his wife Moon Hee
had been having lunch on the terrace at Urban Burger.
Niall: I realized that my wife wasn't actually behind me.
I saw her crawling on the ground,
clearly in a lot of pain.
Her legs looked very bloodied.
I took her arm and dragged her
towards the back wall of the burger restaurant,
so that we didn't have a direct line onto the road,
assuming that it was a hit-and-run grenade attack,
and therefore being out of sight of the road
was the important thing at that point.
♪ ♪
Katherine: Tracer rounds. They were tracer rounds.
You know, there was that flash of light as they were flying through the air.
Valentine: People were confused, they don't know where to go--
stepping on each other. That's when I saw a white lady
with three children.
So they were running in different directions. That's when I picked one.
Katherine: You know, I started to run and then a Kenyan woman came
and grabbed one of the girls from me.
And we dove behind this
computer display table that was there.
She had Portia, my four-year-old,
and was laying on top of her to protect her.
Narrator: Now Diljeet Kaur and a friend
also squeezed in under the display table.
My friend was lying like that
and that Kenyan lady was lying like that.
Katherine: It was a tight fit with the seven of us.
We were kind of laying on top of each other and all scrunched up.
Narrator: As the gunfire got closer
people surged from the main mall into the supermarket.
As we were running, people just came
and started pushing me and Blaise and, like,
I had to reach my arm through just to grab his hand
so I wouldn't be separated from him.
Amber: People were running towards the back of Nakumatt
and that's when I thought, "I've got to get to the kids."
Because it was quite chaotic, I couldn't remember exactly which till,
so it took me a while to sort of find them.
And I remember screaming, "Amelie, Amelie,"
to try and pinpoint where they were.
♪ ♪
( gunfire )
Narrator: Inside Nakumatt, a customer's cell phone
recorded the gunfire getting closer...
Woman: What's happening? ( gunfire )
Narrator: The two gunmen were moving from the street...
( gunfire )
...to the restaurants by the front entrance of the mall.
♪ ♪
Niall: I was looking at his face.
He was young.
And he looked at me and he fired.
As I pulled my wife behind one of the counters
and as I kind of collapsed on the floor,
I realized that I'd been shot.
Narrator: 100 feet away, at Dormans Café,
Nuriana Merali and her little brother
had been waiting for their mother.
With them was a school friend, 15-year-old Makena Kinyua.
Makena: 'Cause we were trying to stay as low as we could,
'cause we knew that the people were shooting from the main entrance.
I could see people running into Nakumatt,
so we ran inside Nakumatt.
Narrator: There was a lull as the gunmen
reloaded their weapons.
Waiter Mike Kagwe
saw Andrew wounded and went to help him.
I think at that moment somebody came and pulled me
from the Dormans. I had to tell him,
( speaks Swahili )
"Stand up. Let's run."
Narrator: Mike rushed Andrew into Nakumatt
towards the loading bays,
where hundreds of shoppers were trying to escape.
♪ ♪
The gunmen now moved from the restaurants
towards Nakumatt.
Katherine: We were all laying as flat as we could
behind that table.
In the beginning I cried. I was just so scared.
And the Kenyan lady, you know,
kinda tapped me on the shoulder and said,
"You can't do that. You have to be strong for your girls."
Valentine: The white lady told the little girl I was holding,
"Put your fingers in your ear
and lay down and keep quiet."
♪ ♪
Narrator: Two policemen guarding a bank on the first floor
spotted the terrorists and opened fire.
Ali Miraji: I was using my rounds to cover myself,
shooting so rapidly so that I could deny him a chance to shoot at me.
I shot him at his right leg,
almost around his knee there.
He was limping, so I knew that the guy was injured.
Narrator: Undeterred, the terrorists headed on towards Nakumatt
and the display table where the four women
and three children were hiding.
♪ ♪
Katherine: Petra kept crying.
She would really scream when the shooting would start.
She would just scream and scream.
I had brought one bottle of milk with me
and I gave that to her
and she drank it and went to sleep.
I realized that
I would definitely-- as being an American,
as being a Christian,
that it was much more dangerous probably for me.
You know, I was a prime target.
♪ ♪
Narrator: As the first two gunmen entered Nakumatt...
two more were making for the mall's upper entrance.
Woman on radio: That's right, it's all happening today
at the rooftop of Westgate. We've got...
Narrator: They headed towards the rooftop
where a children's cooking competition was taking place.
Woman on radio: What are you making today?
Girl: We're making apple pudding
and-- with cream cheese delight
and we're making a crunchy tofu salad.
Jasmine: We heard gunshots, we heard screaming.
I personally felt that this is
a robbery or something
and these are thugs.
They need a passage, so you stay out of the way
and everything will be okay.
♪ ♪
Simon Belcher: It was almost like we were being herded like sheep.
So we went to the furthest corner of the parking lot
on the roof, away from the door and the ramp.
And there were a lot of people stuck in there, lots of--
lots of women and children from the...
Cooking competition, yeah. cooking competition.
♪ ♪
Then suddenly we just saw people falling one after the other.
♪ ♪
Amanda: As they shot, you could hear the sound
of the bullet thud into someone.
The sound of the bullet going into flesh
is like nothing you've ever heard.
Doof! It feels like somebody's being thumped.
You know? And then they just drop.
I looked at them when his gun was pointing at me
and he shot me in the thigh.
And then I realized that I was shot in the stomach as well.
♪ ♪
I just put up my hand and I said, "Please let the children go.
Just let the children go."
The only thing he said was that, "We're here to kill.
You killed our people in Somalia.
We normally don't kill women and children,
but you killed ours in Somalia, so we're here to take revenge."
♪ ♪
Aleem: I started saying the Shahada really loudly.
( speaks Arabic )
Which is...
"There's no God but Allah,
and Muhammad is his messenger."
♪ ♪
So as soon as he heard that, the gunman looked at me
and he said, "Are you Muslim?" And I said, "Yes, I am."
By that time my wife had come next to me.
She was drenched in blood
from top to toe.
He said, "Is this your woman?"
And I said, "Yes, she is."
And then he said, "Go."
Narrator: As Aleem and his wife ran down the ramp to safety,
the gunmen released some other Muslims
who'd also survived the initial attack.
Anne Muigai: An elderly lady stood up,
encouraged to see that the gunman was releasing people.
So she said, "Oh, I'm old.
I can't kneel any more.
My knees are arthritic.
I'm in a lot of pain. Please let me go."
And then the man asked her, "Are you a Muslim?"
And while the woman was thinking of the answer to give,
the gunman just shot her.
Narrator: The gunfire on the rooftop caused panic
amongst shoppers trying to escape
through the loading bays down below.
Amber: Lots of people came running out of the storeroom,
back into Nakumatt supermarket,
screaming, "Don't go that way!
They're shooting that way."
So then we were really stuck.
We couldn't get out the front
and we thought we couldn't get out the back.
♪ ♪
Narrator: The gunmen in Nakumatt made an announcement
on the supermarket's public address system.
"This al-Shabaab attack
and we're going to kill everybody!
You came to our land.
You killed our women and children.
"It's our time."
Margie: Where do you hide in a supermarket?
Anywhere you are, you're exposed.
And I kept on thinking, "Why now?
I can't believe this is happening
while I have my baby with me."
♪ ♪
Amber: I thought the best place to hide would be
behind the meat section, behind the deli counters, if you like.
Narrator: Nuriana and Makena also hid behind the meat counter.
Makena: Nuriana's mom was lying in front of me,
then next to her was Nuriana
and then behind Nuriana was her younger brother.
Everybody was just lying down, face down...
and trying to move as little as possible.
I said, "Can I come and hide back here?"
And they said, "Sure, just--"
and they showed me where to come in,
so I kinda ducked down.
I'm still holding my 8-month-old baby.
( ominous music playing )
Narrator: The security camera footage from the meat counter
was never recovered.
But cameras nearby show the areas
to the left and to the right.
Amber: The occasional phone would ring,
"and everybody would be like, "Shhh!
Turn it off! Put it on silent!"
Sometimes, I would look up...
and the other mothers would look at me,
and we would sort of nod to each other-- kind of encouraging nods
to say, "Look, it's gonna be okay."
Narrator: Bleeding from a shrapnel wound,
Andrew had taken refuge
in Nakumatt's furniture storeroom.
Andrew: I'm starting to feel dizzy.
I'm starting to feel nervous.
I'm now starting to think
how this could be the end of ourselves, you know?
I don't know whether we'll be out of the mall.
I'm bleeding, and I'm starting to fear now.
I was thinking like, "Oh, this is the end of the story now."
♪ ♪
They ushered me into a room
where they administered first aid.
That's when he told me that he's thirsty.
He wants water and to me--
I told him that, "Just stay put. Wait for me.
Let me go look for water. I bring it to you."
♪ ♪
Narrator: As Mike went downstairs
to fetch water for Andrew...
the power went out.
Mike: That's when one of them
saw me and shot me.
I was screaming and something in me told me like,
"Shut up or they might be coming, looking for you."
So I kept quiet
and I started running.
The minute he got to us
he collapsed, he fell down.
( woman gasps ) Oh, my God.
( people chattering )
To be honest,
I've watched enough movies to know what to do.
( people chattering )
Frank: When someone is shot and they are bleeding,
you have to apply pressure, at least to stop the bleeding.
I was a little bit scared
that he might succumb to his wounds...
but I didn't let that...
distract me from doing my best.
To me, I feel that telling him thank you--
it's not enough.
Yeah, 'cause he really saved my life.
♪ ♪
Narrator: As the lights came back on,
the first pair of gunmen headed
for the meat counter, where 20 people were hiding.
I told the lady that someone was coming,
'cause I could see the reflection of someone coming.
She was shaking and saying, "They're coming. They're coming."
And I was like, "Shh shh shh,"
thinking they were just gonna walk past.
But they came, and they came straight into where we were.
And then, very deliberately,
they just shot everybody around us.
I never looked up. I never saw anything,
but it was just the sound of just...
( mimics gunfire )
♪ ♪
Fred Bosire: They said, "Now it is your turn."
We have come for you."
You know, as they were shooting,
children were screaming.
Yeah, as they were shooting.
I just felt some pressure, though.
I didn't really feel any pain.
It's now-- when the person walked away,
I just looked and I could see that I'd been shot.
And it was a really strange physical force,
and I found out later that I was shot in the--
in my left leg.
It entered in my left leg and it came out by my right hip.
♪ ♪
My main concern at that point was just to make sure
that my kids didn't see anything,
just to try and get them to keep their faces down.
so I was holding their faces down, saying,
"Don't look up. Don't look up."
There was just a lot of blood
and a lot of anguish in people's faces
as they lay there dying.
Narrator: 200 feet away,
Katherine and her three daughters
were still hiding under the display table.
Katherine: I was worried that my girls,
if they were to get shot--
that I would have to lay there and to watch them die,
or if I were to be shot,
that they would have to lay there and watch me die.
And I didn't want them to have to go through that.
Valentine: Where I was lying, I could see
there was this guy at the doorway of Nakumatt,
and I asked him, "What's going on?"
And he told me, "Lie down." That's what he told me.
Because from there, where he was,
he could see the other direction where I could not see.
Narrator: The second pair of gunmen
had come down from the rooftop.
They shot anyone they found.
Valentine: He was peeping, peeping.
Why did he think of hiding under the elephant?
Anyone could see you.
Whenever I see that elephant, for the rest of my life...
I'll always remember that guy.
♪ ♪
Narrator: Inside Nakumatt, the four gunmen regrouped.
They had murdered several dozen people so far.
♪ ♪
Outside the mall, there was still no sign
of a rescue operation.
It was 45 minutes since the attack had begun.
Goran Tomasevic: I got a call of a friend,
"and told me, "Don't go to Westgate. There's a robbery
and there's lots of dead people."
So I grab a camera and drive down.
( sirens approaching )
♪ ♪ Narrator: Veteran war photographer
Goran Tomasevic of Reuters news agency
shot rapid bursts of pictures
as he moved past the terrorists' car
and found the victims of the first few minutes of the attack.
Goran: Music coming out of one of the bars.
It was very weird, seeing dead people
and some funny music coming out.
The kind of music what you can hear in elevators, you know?
♪ ♪
Narrator: A handful of police had arrived,
but the sound of heavy gunfire
had kept them out of the mall.
♪ ♪
Amber lay behind the meat counter with her children,
bleeding from a bullet through the pelvis.
Amber: It felt endless.
It felt like no one was coming for us
and I was gonna die there.
I was gonna die there on top of my children,
and what would happen to them?
The little boy next to me was screaming in agony.
He'd been shot and he was screaming, "They've shot my mother!
Why did this have to happen? Why did they do this?"
And screaming and screaming,
and I was trying to calm him down.
At some point, the sister also passed away.
The people who were screaming
stopped screaming, eventually...
as they died, and so it became quieter.
Narrator: Paul Muriuki, a driver for an American charity,
was still alive.
♪ ♪
Esther Muriuki: He had seven gunshots.
They shoot him at once,
and once they realized that he didn't die,
they still come and shoot him once again.
It was very painful.
He was a person who loved dialogue
to solve issues, not violence.
He was humble.
♪ ♪
Narrator: In the burger restaurant,
it had now been 50 minutes
since Niall and his wife had been shot.
Niall: Her legs had been pretty badly shredded
and she was losing quite a lot of blood.
My shoulder and arm had been very badly hit
and I had, you know,
holes big enough to put fingers inside.
And with the blood I was losing, myself,
it was harder to stay conscious the whole time.
She was clearly...
on the edge and shaking
from what must have been blood loss, in retrospect.
Clearly in a lot of pain. Clearly very...
very scared.
I tried to move closer to her at that point,
took her hand at one point.
And...
at some point, I'm...
pretty sure she died.
It was obviously hard to tell but...
I don't think she was breathing.
When I knew I couldn't do anything else,
I closed her eyes...
took her wedding ring so that it wouldn't get lost...
and...
just fell back.
I think I lay on her with...
my head on her shoulder for a little while,
where I tried to get to so that I could actually
reach her to do mouth-to-mouth, but...
Yeah.
I don't know. I mean, after that,
it felt fairly... empty.
♪ ♪
( ominous music playing )
Amber: We then heard the footsteps coming back,
and the little boy went quiet.
He understood to play dead at that point.
"The terrorists asked-- "If there's children alive, we'll let them go.
We do not believe in hurting children."
I don't know where it came from,
but I decided that, probably, this was
my only chance
and the only chance for my children,
and so I stood up.
♪ ♪
I said to him, "My children are here.
They're alive. Will you let them go?"
He said, "Yes, but you'll have to stay.
The children can go, but you'll have to stay."
And so I started trying to get my children to stand up.
Makena: I was expecting to hear him
shooting them.
Then he asked, "Who's Muslim?"
And then my friend's brother--
he-- he-- I could hear him standing up.
So he stood up and then he said, "I'm Muslim."
And he was like, "You killed my mother and my sister,
and I love them very much."
And he was like, "Sorry, we are really really sorry.
Please forgive us."
I started walking with my children,
kind of ignoring the fact that he said
that I would have to stay.
Then he said, "Can you take the boy with you?"
I asked the terrorist-- I said,
"There's also another girl here who's alive.
Can I take her too?" And he sort of looked at her.
He didn't look best pleased, but he said, "Okay."
I thought they were up to something,
because, I mean, they were acting so nice,
and these are the people who have killed so many people.
Amber: 'Cause I couldn't carry the boy myself,
so I sort of just threw him in the trolley.
I remember my son saying something to them.
"It's not good to shoot people.
But it's not good to shoot people.
You're a bad man. You've got to let everybody go."
And the man tried to explain himself to them.
"Please forgive us." And he was asking for forgiveness.
And at that point I said to my children,
"Shut up. Don't say another word.
Be very quiet. Just keep walking."
And I just wanted to just keep walking
towards the exit.
Makena: And he was like, "Hey, and remember--"
So I knew, "This is it." So I just looked behind me,
and then he said, "Become Muslim."
I said, "Yeah, yeah."
♪ ♪
Katherine: We heard voices of children.
We looked at each other and kind of questioned what was going on,
but there was a woman that was with some children
and she just walked out of Nakumatt and left.
We thought maybe she'd lost her mind.
♪ ♪
Amber: All you do is you focus and it's one step at a time.
One step, one breath,
one step, one breath, and just try to get out.
And yet my daughter was like the complete opposite.
She was just strolling along, and I remember her saying,
"Mommy, I don't want to do any more shopping today."
The terrorists had actually given them chocolate bars.
According to my daughter, as they gave my son the Mars bar,
he said, "No, can I have some chewing gum?"
And Amelie said, "No no, you've got to take the Mars Bar."
And you know, it's like they were trying
to-- to-- to appease the children,
and explaining to them what they were doing
and why they were doing it, and kept saying,
"We're not monsters. Here, have a chocolate."
♪ ♪
I can't explain why they asked for forgiveness,
why they said they were sorry.
I mean, you know, how can you shoot somebody one second,
kill women and children, and then say,
"Oh, now we want to let children go,"
and then kill more women and children
and then say, "Oh, but we're sorry?"
You know, how can you--
it just shows how-- they're just mad.
( sirens blaring )
( chattering )
She is injured-- behind her.
What's your name? What's your name? ( crying )
What's your name?
Narrator: 90 minutes after the attack had begun,
the Kenyan security forces still hadn't gone into the mall.
Stay in the wall. ( chattering )
Yeah, don't stand in open area.
Again, they fire.
Stay on the wall.
There's people dying up there, bleeding to death,
and I can't do all 10 people on my own.
Narrator: Some civilians had been trying to get help
to people injured at the children's cooking competition.
Give us time now to go in with the SWAT.
Man: Please, I'm a soldier myself.
You're a soldier, but you are not a SWAT.
I did 25-- And look upon me now, we are here now.
I did 25 years in the army. Give us time.
Give us time! I know a safe route.
I'm telling you our SWAT team is here.
Give us time to organize ourselves. Right?
Men: Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Narrator: While the security forces
debated what to do... No no, just walk.
Please please please please please.
...time was running out for the wounded.
Man #2: By the time you react, people will die!
♪ ♪
Simon: Blood started spreading all around me.
Well, how long now do I have
before I just lose too much blood?
I could feel myself getting a bit weaker,
and I actually mouthed to Amanda, "I love you."
Just-- I figured,
"I've at least got a chance to say something," right?
We laid there for a very long time
and you would expect to see a lot of armed soldiers
and all just coming up the ramp.
Maybe that's what we were expecting, but that didn't happen.
( chattering )
Narrator: In the absence of an official rescue plan,
a handful of plainclothes police
decided to act on their own.
We were very anxious
to go in and see if we can save some lives.
♪ ♪ Goran: The police, they were talking something in Swahili.
I did not-- I could not-- so I told them,
"What you guys doing?" They said, "We're going up."
Narrator: Goran followed Corporal Ali up the ramp.
Nura: I had harnessed all pockets of courage
that I had inside me to come up there.
I was not thinking that I could die,
that I could get shot.
I felt invincible.
That's the truth.
♪ ♪
At that stage, I didn't even know
that there were people up there.
I felt very angry.
I felt disgusted...
with the wanton killing that took place there.
In my line of duty, I have never shed tears.
On that day, I found tears...
dropping from my eyes.
♪ ♪
I just ran down like a crazy man.
"We need ambulance! We need ambulance!"
( indiscernible dialog )
Stretcher! Stretcher, please! Stretcher here!
Stay with us!
( indiscernible dialog )
( girl screams ) My friend!
Narrator: Simon Belcher had been bleeding
for two hours by the time help came.
My survival depended
on getting to hospital A.S.A.P.
My doctor said another 10-15 minutes
and I would have gone.
Narrator: Ruhila Adatia,
a popular radio host, was seven months pregnant.
She had been shot in the leg.
Issa Premji: I went straight for Ruhila
and she opened her eyes and she told me,
"Issa, help me."
I said, "No, I'm here.
I'm getting you out of here."
( chatter ) Move! Move!
Issa: When we picked her up,
she was still talking to me.
When I put her in the ambulance, right,
her eyes rolled back...
and I straight away told the guy,
"She's going into shock."
Narrator: Ruhila and her unborn child
died on the way to a hospital.
Ruhila, that we lost, she was a Muslim.
She was expecting a baby of her faith,
so it did not matter.
It just did not matter to them.
Whatever it is,
Let the ambulance crew move out with them!
You need to get out! Man: Yeah, ambulance, ambulance!
Narrator: A handful of civilians
had come to the rooftop
to assist the Red Cross and the plainclothes police.
( chattering )
Abdul Haji: We saw the level of destruction
that had taken place-- the murder and the killing
and the injured people.
And we knew there were survivors in there.
Harish Patel: We just said, "Whoever has the balls,
we go in. The rest stay."
( speaks Swahili )
"If we have to die, we die."
♪ ♪
Narrator: Now seven men went into the mall:
five plainclothes police
and civilians Harish and Abdul
who were carrying licensed handguns.
Abdul: We didn't have a command structure.
We were not taking orders from anybody.
Most of the police were still outside,
But we did have the plainclothes police officers
who were with us inside.
♪ ♪
Nura: When we hit the ground floor now...
hey, bullets started flying now.
Those guys, they started showing us
that they really meant business.
Goran: I clearly saw one of the gunmens.
"Shall I do picture?" Then I said, "No, because it-it-it--
it smells bad."
I said to police, "We have to be careful.
We can get shot."
Abdul: I had 14 rounds,
and it didn't quite cross our mind
that we had small guns and they had big guns.
A gun is a gun. At the end of the day, it's how good you are with it.
Narrator: The display table opposite the entrance
to Nakumatt was now in the crossfire.
It was instantaneous fear and just dread.
Valentine: The bullets, they're shining.
( mimics gunfire )
I felt a big bang on my leg.
I knew I was shot.
I really tried to look like this,
down like this,
then I saw a hole in my jeans...
into my flesh.
( ominous music playing )
Nura: I felt a heavy punch in my back.
I realized that the punch was a bullet.
I've been shot.
With the effort that I was making,
I released the grip
that I had on the...
the torn abdomen...
and I found the intestines,
bubbling out.
Goran came and lifted me up.
When I was running with him,
he start firing his AK by accident
between our legs,
so it was little bit difficult.
He was a very brave guy.
I heard after he was all right.
( indiscernible shouting )
( gunshot )
Let's go! ( indiscernible shouting )
Get an ambulance, please! Get an ambulance!
( indiscernible dialog )
Narrator: As the gun battle raged inside the mall,
the police SWAT team was outside waiting for orders.
Abdul: If there was any time
that any of us should have run away,
it was when our colleague was shot.
At that point in time, if there was any coward amongst us,
he would have-- he would have opted out
and left. But nobody left.
♪ ♪
Narrator: By engaging the terrorists at the front of Nakumatt,
Abdul and his group enabled
more than a hundred trapped civilians to escape,
including Katherine's sons.
Blaise: We asked, "Is our mother out? Is she safe?"
They responded, "We don't know. Just pray."
We really had no clue where she was,
but we knew she was inside Westgate somewhere.
Abdul: We noticed that there was--
there was a lady hiding under a table
and she looked terrified.
Katherine: The Kenyan lady finally said, "The cops are here."
I couldn't see them, but the other ladies could,
and they were communicating with them.
♪ ♪
We were quite shocked because she was right in the middle
of the crossfire between the gunmen and us.
I signaled to my colleagues,
I told them, "There's a lady.
She's in a bad situation. We need to get her out."
At one point this guy with a black bandanna tied on his head--
my eyes and his locked, and he was taunting me.
He was saying... ( speaks Swahili )
You know, "Come, come!"
He was taunting us to come closer
so that we can engage in a fight.
I'm a Kenyan-Somali, a Muslim.
What angered me the most
was the fact that they were Muslims...
and they were purporting to...
do whatever they were doing in the name of Islam.
♪ ♪
Narrator: One of the plainclothes policemen threw tear gas,
hoping to push the terrorists further back into Nakumatt.
Abdul: We started proceeding closer and closer
towards the supermarket entrance.
Narrator: Diagonally opposite the display table
was a pharmacy.
We were much closer to the lady
who was hiding under the table.
We were able to communicate with her...
so we told her to run,
and she shook her head.
I told him that I can't come,
because we are four ladies and three kids there.
Narrator: As Abdul prepared to rescue the women,
he found another group of people
hiding in the pharmacy.
♪ ♪
He now had only minutes
to get them all to safety
before the terrorists could recover
from the tear gas and open fire again.
♪ ♪
Katherine: One of the Asian ladies reached out her hands
and signaled that she would carry the baby for me.
Diljeet: I told that lady,
"Just give me your small baby,"
so-- I know that she can't run with three kids.
Katherine: So I handed her Petra,
'cause I knew by then my legs were jelly
and I just wouldn't be able to carry all of them.
Valentine: They told us, "You go one by one."
I prayed my last prayers, then I decided "No."
I told God, "I'm not dying today."
( laughs ) "No no, not today!"
Katherine: She just knew.
She just knew it was her opportunity to go,
and so she ran.
Valentine: She was very brave.
Very brave.
♪ ♪
Katherine: Almost the entire time my mind was on getting out,
and when I would get out, and what would happen
when I got out, and what I would do the rest of the day.
And I kept thinking, "How am I supposed to drive home?
My nerves are completely shot.
There's just no way that I'm gonna be able to drive home."
( chattering )
Katherine: It was wonderful.
We know that it was a miracle.
( chattering )
Okay. Move, move, move.
Valentine: There were just four of us.
Everybody was close to each other.
We don't know each other.
We all come from different communities,
but at that time we were one.
I'll always treasure that moment,
because everybody was caring about the other.
♪ ♪
Narrator: Having been forced to the back
of the supermarket by the tear gas,
the gunmen were now just feet away
from Margie and her baby.
Margie: I was thinking, "I've got to slow my breath down,
'cause this baby is gonna pick up
on the kind of extreme fear that I'm feeling right now."
I was almost just counting the seconds,
every single second that passed.
And all of a sudden it happened.
There he was.
I looked up at him and I just mouthed the words,
"He's just a baby. He's just a baby.
He's just a baby."
And I must have said it quite a few times,
and he just kept on staring at me.
And after a while, he looked to the side
at some of his colleagues that were there
and said something in a language that I didn't understand.
And someone in a broken voice said,
"Lady with baby, stand up!"
Then as I'm looking at them,
the terrorist that's in the middle in the front looks at us,
sees the baby peering around,
turns his head to the side,
kinda cocks his head, makes this cute baby face and goes...
and waves at me and waves at the baby like...
And I just remember thinking,
"If they see my face now,
they're gonna know how crazy I think this is.
I can't believe what just happened.
They're killing women and children
"and they're making baby faces at us and waving."
So I turned around and started walking out.
As I got there, this tear gas dropped right at the entrance.
I had to decide:
do I walk out into the mall area from the supermarket
"or do I turn around and go back into the supermarket?"
I was like, "I'm not going back to where those guys are.
I'm not going back to where they just killed everybody."
♪ ♪
There were hordes of people.
There were security forces outside.
I mean it felt like millions of people had surrounded the mall.
And I didn't stop. I just kept on running.
♪ ♪
Abdul: The tear gas had actually affected my eyes,
so I started walking towards the main entrance.
On the right side there was the Urban Burger café,
so I thought I might as well get some water
and splash it in my face.
Narrator: By now Niall had been bleeding
for more than 3 hours.
Niall: I'd lay there, kind of drifting in and out of consciousness
and at some point I was aware of movement
coming into the burger restaurant.
Someone had come over...
and was basically washing their--
their face and eyes in the sink
that was more or less above our heads.
Abdul: I asked him where he'd been injured
and he pointed to his shoulder and his leg.
So I told him... "Just bear with me.
I'm going to get some help for you,
and we'll get you out of here."
Niall: You try and do what you can not to be helpless,
but when that kind of situation happens,
there's a limited set of options.
The biggest thing is not knowing what's happening,
and so you're having to make choices
without any real idea
of what the consequences of those choices could be.
It feels wrong in some ways calling it "unlucky,"
because someone set out to do this.
But for us to be there...
was just a matter of bad luck.
♪ ♪ ( indiscernible dialog )
Narrator: Pablo Ghataurhae had gone to watch
the cooking competition with his family.
When the attack began,
he was on the rooftop with his grandmother.
Dipi Ghataurhae: Pablo was 17 years old.
He was going to go into university
to do mechanical engineering.
♪ ♪
He wanted to be a rally driver.
It's funny, he used to make
these statements to me at times,
"When I become a rally driver..."
be prepared, Mom.
I'm gonna die early...
"so you be prepared."
He went with his grandma, which I'm proud of.
He looked after her while she was alive,
and he's looking after her all the way up there.
♪ ♪
Narrator: The terrorists returned to the meat counter,
looking for anyone hiding or playing dead.
There is a lady who was behind me.
She-- she was alive.
Narrator: The gunmen had been speaking to their masters in Somalia
and needed more minutes for their cell phones.
Edwin Omoding: They're saying,
"Where do we find the Safaricom scratch cards?"
So the lady said,
"The scratch cards--
it is at the tills,
but I don't know the password."
Jared Odhiambo: After that they ask her, "Are you a Kenyan?"
The lady say yeah,
she's a Kenyan.
They ask her if she's
a Christian or a Muslim.
The lady told them, "I'm a Christian."
One of them just fired.
One gunshot and the lady was dead.
Narrator: Cashier Veronicah Kamau
was killed at nine minutes to 4:00,
three hours and 21 minutes into the attack.
She was the last civilian to die at Westgate.
♪ ♪
The terrorists left the shop floor
and headed up a service staircase
towards the furniture storeroom.
Of perhaps 2,000 people at the mall that Saturday,
they had killed 61,
including a dozen children and three pregnant women.
Hundreds more were left with permanent injuries.
( chattering )
Three and a half hours after the terrorists had struck,
the police SWAT team finally entered the mall,
but it was too late to save anyone.
The massacre was over.
♪ ♪
As they worked their way down from the second floor...
on the ground floor a platoon of Kenyan soldiers
were entering Nakumatt, looking for the terrorists.
♪ ♪
Narrator: They advanced through the vegetable section
towards the meat counter,
where six shop workers were still hiding.
♪ ♪
We can see them, on that reflection.
I told--
I told my friend, "Hey,
is that police? Are they police?"
I opened the door.
They felt I was a terrorist,
so they sprayed the bullets towards that side.
Narrator: The soldiers now fired
at anything that moved.
I tried to signal at them,
as I waved the uniform.
"We are the Nakumatt staff! Nakumatt staff!"
Because I felt it was unsafe just to come out physically,
that one-- they would have shot me.
Man, those soldiers-- they do not consider.
They are just shooting, yeah? They're just shooting.
Narrator: As the soldiers fired wildly around them,
the four terrorists were relaxing
in the furniture storeroom.
( rattling )
Narrator: By mistake, the army shot three policemen,
one of them fatally.
Issa: We put him onto the stretcher and we were rushing him out,
then all of a sudden he started shaking.
( speaks English )
( chattering )
He clearly said, "We can't work like this.
We are the ones who are supposed to be the head of this."
They withdrew completely from the operation.
Narrator: In the confusion, both the Kenyan army
and the police SWAT team left the mall,
just 90 minutes after they'd arrived.
♪ ♪
Narrator: In the furniture storeroom,
the al-Shabaab gunmen prayed.
They had come to kill and be killed.
Now they waited for the Kenyans to attack.
Very little is known about them.
The youngest was 19, the oldest 23.
All four had arrived in Kenya three months earlier.
They had scouted Westgate a number of times before the attack.
After a few hours in the storeroom,
the terrorists noticed the security camera
and disconnected it.
Later that night, a squad of Kenyan soldiers
crept back into Nakumatt.
With them was a civilian
who videoed the meat counter
where Amber and her children
had hidden earlier in the day.
♪ ♪
Fred Bosire, in his white coat,
had been playing dead for 8 hours.
Fred: I still lied down.
When I saw the military boots
and the uniform, now I was relieved.
( speaking foreign language )
Narrator: The shop workers who'd been hiding
behind the meat locker were also freed.
They were the last group of civilians
to be rescued from the mall.
♪ ♪
I was very lucky. I can say I was very lucky.
Maybe that was my day. That's what I can say.
Narrator: At 13 minutes past 9:00,
a security camera captured
the last recorded image of the terrorists.
♪ ♪
Narrator: The stand-off between the terrorists
and the Kenyan army continued for another 40 hours,
during which five soldiers were killed.
Two days after the attack began,
the army fired a high explosive shell into Nakumatt.
All four terrorists died in the fire.
Their weapons and what remained of their bodies
were later recovered from the ashes.
As Nakumatt burned to the ground,
the security cameras stopped recording.
The mall, which was under army control,
was looted.
The Kenyan government stood by the actions
of its security forces.
President Uhuru Kenyatta: I am satisfied that our disciplined forces
have responded in a professional
and effective manner.
We have ashamed and defeated
our attackers.
Let us continue to wage
a relentless moral war
as our forces conduct the physical battle.
We shall... triumph.
Narrator: Hundreds of miles north in Somalia,
al-Shabaab also declared a victory.
( man speaking foreign language )
( singing in foreign language )
( men singing )
Nura: Leave alone Islam.
Islam-- the term "Islam," it means "peace."
Where is peace? Where is Islam now?
The term Islam-- where is it
when you kill innocent children?
When you kill women?
I'm a Muslim myself.
For now, Westgate remains closed.
It isn't known when it might open again.
Whatever the intended meaning
of al-Shabaab's spectacle at Westgate,
the security cameras revealed it as little more
than the mass murder of defenseless civilians.
♪ ♪
Amber: I don't really blame them as individuals.
They really were just ordinary men
with very very wrong ideas about life.
When I spoke to them, there was a real calm
and determination about what they were doing.
They were there to send out a message to the world--
however messed up that message was--
and to die doing it.
As long as I've got breath left inside me...
and a finger...
to squeeze the trigger...
I won't let...
the same thing which happened at Westgate...
happen again.
( ominous music playing )