Location | Nairobi, Kenya |
---|---|
Coordinates | 1°15′25″S36°48′12″E / 1.25694°S 36.80333°E |
Address | Mwanzi Road, Westlands |
Opening date | 2007 18 July 2015 (reopening) |
Owner | Sony Holdings [1] |
No. of stores and services | 80+ |
Total retail floor area | 350,000 square feet (33,000 m2) |
No. of floors | 5 |
Website | www |
Westgate Shopping Mall (also known as Westgate) is an upscale shopping mall located in the Westlands division of Nairobi, Kenya. It was first opened in 2007.
The five-storey mall opened in 2007 and included 350,000 square feet (33,000 m2) of retail space and housed more than 90 stores. [2] Nakumatt and Planet Media Cinemas anchored the mall. Other large units included Identity, Mr. Price Home, Artcaffe, and Barclays Bank on the ground floor, and Millionaires Casino on the second floor. Smaller units included outlets for international brands Adidas, Bata Shoes, CFC Stanbic Bank, Converse, FedEx, and Samsung Mobile. [3]
The luxury shopping center was popular with Kenya's new consumer class, as well as foreign officials and expatriates. [4] [5]
On 21 September 2013, a group of 4 terrorists associated with the al-Shabaab militant group wounded and killed customers, employees and visitors at the Westgate mall in an extended attack, using firearms and hand grenades. At least 68 people were reportedly killed, with over 200 injured. The terrorists held many customers hostage and it took four days to end the attack. [6] By 25 September, three floors of the mall had collapsed because of it. [7]
The mall reopened on 18 July 2015. Parts of the mall which were badly damaged in the terrorist attack underwent further reconstruction and remained closed until 2018. [8] Legal proceedings with the insurer delayed reconstruction. [9] About 90% of previous tenants of Westgate retained their leases, and IRG, an Israeli security company, was hired to train the mall's new security staff. [9]
The mall's reopening was met with mixed reactions. Some hailed it as a demonstration of Nairobi's resilience in the face of terrorism, while others criticised it as disrespectful to the victims, suggesting that it should be converted to a memorial site or a place of worship instead. [10]
The 2002 Mombasa attacks was a two-pronged terrorist attack on 28 November 2002 in Mombasa, Kenya against an Israeli-owned hotel and a plane belonging to Arkia Airlines. An all-terrain vehicle crashed through a barrier outside the Paradise Hotel and blew up, killing 13 and injuring 80. At the same time, attackers fired two surface-to-air missiles at an Israeli charter plane. The Paradise Hotel was the only Israeli-owned hotel in the Mombasa area. The attacks were believed to be orchestrated by al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia in an attempt to disrupt the Israeli tourist industry on the African continent. Much speculation has occurred as to who the perpetrators are, but no complete list of suspects has been defined. The attack was the second al-Qaeda terrorist operation in Kenya, following the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi in 1998. Following the attack, the UN Security Council and other nations condemned the bombing.
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Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, commonly known as al-Shabaab, is a Sunni Islamist military and political organization based in Somalia and active elsewhere in East Africa. It is actively involved in the ongoing Somali Civil War and incorporates elements of Somali nationalism into its Islamist cause. Allegiant to the militant pan-Islamist organization al-Qaeda since 2012, it has also been suspected of forging ties with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
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From late 2011 to 2014, Kenya experienced an upsurge in violent terrorist attacks. Kenyan government officials asserted that many of the murders and blasts were carried out by al-Shabaab in retaliation for Operation Linda Nchi, a coordinated military mission between the Somalian military and Kenyan military that began in October 2011, when troops from Kenya crossed the border into the conflict zones of southern Somalia. According to Kenyan security experts, the bulk of the attacks were increasingly carried out by radicalized Kenyan youth who were hired for the purpose. Kenya security officials also indicated that they were part of death squads, which carried out many of the killings under the orders of a government security council. By mid-2014, the cumulative attacks began affecting Kenya's tourism industry, as Western nations issued travel warnings to their citizens.
Many terrorist attacks have occurred in Kenya during the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1980, the Jewish-owned Norfolk hotel was attacked by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1998, the US embassy was bombed in Nairobi, as was the Israeli-owned Paradise hotel in 2002 in Mombasa. In 2013, the Somali jihadist group al-Shabaab killed 67 people at Nairobi's Westgate Shopping Mall. There have also been many other attacks.
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On 21 September 2013, four masked gunmen attacked the Westgate shopping mall, an upmarket mall in Nairobi, Kenya. There are conflicting reports about the number killed in the attack, since part of the mall collapsed due to a fire that started during the siege. The attack resulted in 71 total deaths, including 62 civilians, five Kenyan soldiers, and all four gunmen. Approximately 200 people were wounded in the massacre.
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