the innocent people they were massacring. their previous most deadly attack had been against people who dared to watch a world cup soccer match in uganda in july 2010. those uganda bombings killed 74 people absolutely indiscriminately. as strange as it is to say it those kinds of tactics were frowned upon by al qaeda under bin laden and under ayman al zawahiri after bin laden was killed. al qaeda central made a habit of advising other terrorist groups around the world who wanted to operate under the al qaeda umbrella that they should try to kill non-muslims more than muslims. so there is weird evidence that al shabaab may have made a shift in the tactics to try to kill fewer muslims but more non-muslims in order to specifically please the top leadership of al qaeda. al shabaab formally joined al qaeda in 2012. that would be after the uganda bombings, but before westgate.
2012 is when they pledged allegiance to ayman al zawahiri. today, al shabaab carried out their deadliest attack yet in kenya, at the only public university in northern kenya. this school has been open only for about four years. it has about 900 students. today, just before dawn at about 5:30 a.m. local time, masked al hab bab shabaab gunman shot their way through the gates of the school and forced their way in and then they they just started killing people and taking hostages in the university dormitories. all the students had basically been asleep when the shooting started. one eyewitness told reporters that the gunmen at his door opened doors and screamed are you christian or muslim. he said, quote, if you were a christian, you were shot on the spot. it took two hours for security forces to arrive at that campus. and begin evacuating the students from the dorms. finally, it was after dusk. it was about 15 hours later when officials finally announced that the operation was over that t
a year and a half ago, the al shabaab terrorist group pulled off an attack in downtown cosmopolitan nairobi that was almost impossible to believe. multiple attackers in broad daylight storage add crowded upscale shopping mall and started shooting and taking hostages. that siege went on for three nights and four days before all the attackers were killed. one of the hallmarks was that survivors said the terrorists tried to figure out who was a muslim and who wasn t among their hostages so they could try to specifically kill the non-muslims. the attackers reportedly asked people trivia questions about the koran and tenets of islam. and people who couldn t prove to these guys satisfaction that they were appropriately muslim, those people were killed first. in all in the westgate mall siege, 67 people were killed. al shabaab had not always been so discerning about the faith of