A girl stands by the body of a man after escaping Westgate Shopping Centre in Nairobi. Photo: Reuters

Scores of Kenyans gathered yesterday at a site overlooking the Nairobi mall where Islamist militants were still holding hostages. They were awaiting what they expected to be a violent denouement.

“They entered through blood, that’s how they’ll leave,” said Jonathan Maungo, a private security guard.

President Kenyatta, facing his first major security challenge since being elected in March, said he lost a nephew and his fiancée in the raid and vowed to defeat the militants.

In an address, he urged wealthy governments not to warn their citizens against visiting a country heavily dependent on tourist income, while insisting he would not pull out Kenyan troops from Somalia: “We shall not relent on the war on terror.”

Saying all the gunmen were now in one place, Kenyatta added: “With the professionals on site, I assure Kenyans that we have as good a chance to successfully neutralise the terrorists as we can hope for.”

Foreign governments, including Israel, offered help. But the heavily armed and well-disciplined attackers, still unidentified, had shown no hesitation in killing civilians. The spokesman for al Shabaab’s military operations said in Somalia his group had nothing to fear: “Where will Uhuru Kenyatta get the power with which he threatened us?” said Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab.

Al Shabaab’s siege underlined its ability to cause major disruptions with relatively limited resources.

“In terms of capacity, while the group has grown considerably weaker in terms of being able to wage a conventional war, it is now ever more capable of carrying out asymmetric warfare,” said Abdi Aynte, director of Mogadishu’s Heritage Institute of Policy Studies.

The focus of attention yesterday was on the mall’s branch of the Nakumatt supermarket, one of Kenya’s biggest chains. The company closed its other stores yesterday for security reasons.

Kenyatta said women were among the 10 to 15 attackers. Asked whether hostages had explosives strapped to them, he said he would not comment on operational issues. Aynte also said the raid showed “a major failure on the part of the Kenyan security services”, which had not detected an operation that must have taken several months to plan. Other experts said Western agencies had also not picked it up.

Kenya’s deputy president, William Ruto, asked judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague to allow him to return home. He and Kenyatta face charges of crimes against humanity for their alleged role in coordinating violence that swept Kenya in the aftermath of the contested 2007 elections, when they ran in rival camps. Both deny the charges. They won an election on the same ticket in March.