Siege ends after 20 hours

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta yesterday said that gunmen who stormed a luxury hotel complex, killing 14 people, had been "eliminated" after an almost 20-hour operation in which hundreds of civilians were rescued.

The attack was claimed by the al-Qaeda-linked Somali group Al-Shabaab, which has targeted Kenya since it sent its army into Somalia in October 2011 to fight the jihadist group.

At least one suicide bomber blew himself up and others swapped gunfire with security forces as the assault on DusitD2, a complex which includes a 101-room hotel, spa, restaurant and offices, unfolded on Tuesday.

"There were five terrorists and all of them are no more," Kenyan police chief Joseph Boinnet told AFP. "It is a clearing exercise now going on there."

For many Kenyans, news of the attack revived traumatic memories of a 2013 Shabaab raid on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall that left 67 dead -- a siege played out over four days that led to sharp criticism of the authorities' response.

But this time, local media heaped praise on the security forces for their intervention, which Kenyatta said entailed the evacuation of some 700 civilians.

George Kinoti, the director of criminal investigations, told AFP that "two principal suspects" had been arrested in connection with the attack.

CCTV footage broadcast on local media showed four black-clad, heavily-armed men entering the complex on Tuesday afternoon.

At least one of them blew himself up at the start of the attack. A police source said two attackers were shot dead Wednesday morning after a prolonged shootout.

The attack began at about 3pm (1200 GMT) on Tuesday, with a loud blast followed by gunfire and rapid calls for help spreading on Twitter.

Among the dead was an American citizen, a State Department official said. The British foreign office confirmed the death of a British-South African dual national and said another British person was injured.

A mortuary official said there were also 11 Kenyan victims, one with no papers, as well as an unidentified torso of a male adult.

It was a tormented night for families of those trapped as they waited outside the hotel while sporadic gunfire rang out.

After dawn, explosions and shooting intensified until the complex was secured mid-morning.

One survivor rescued from the building told a local television station the attackers were "very confident; they were people who knew what they were doing".

The last major attack in the country took place in 2015, when Shabaab killed 148 people at the university in Garissa, eastern Kenya. Since then sporadic attacks have targeted security forces mostly in the remote northeastern parts of the country.