Updated Sunday 5:46 a.m. ET
The death toll at an upscale shopping mall in Nairobi has increased to at least 52, and civilians are still inside as militants exchange sporadic barrages of gunfire with Kenyan security troops outside.
"The priority is to save as many lives as possible," Joseph Lenku, Kenya's Interior cabinet secretary told AP early today. Kenyan forces have already rescued about 1,000 people, he said.
He said that five to 15 attackers are involved in the standoff, but declined to estimate the number of hostages.
Original Post, Saturday 8:38 a.m. ET
An upscale mall in Kenya was the scene of gunfire and explosions Saturday, after a group of attackers used assault rifles and grenades to strike during lunch hour in Nairobi. At least 39 people have died in the attack, Kenya's president says, along with more than 150 wounded.
American citizens are among the victims of the attack, although it's not yet clear what their status is. The attack shocked people in the mall, which is known for attracting wealthy and foreign shoppers.
"Rob Vandijk, who works at the Dutch embassy, said he was eating at a restaurant inside the mall when attackers lobbed hand grenades inside the building," the AP reports. "He said gunfire then burst out and people screamed as they dropped to the ground."
The AP reports that police arrived at the mall roughly 30 minutes after the attack began. A gun battle ensued; the situation was described as a standoff. Sporadic gunfire is being reported from the scene.
Updated at 7:40 p.m. ET: Some Attackers Still Holed Up In Mall
The Associated Press reported that 12 hours after the attack began, some of the attackers remained inside the mall holding an unknown number of hostages.
The New York Times reported:
Several Western intelligence officials said they suspected that the attack was carried out by the Shabab, an Islamist militant group based in Somalia that has carried out suicide attacks and beheadings inside Somalia and threatened Kenyan malls before. A confidential United Nations report on Saturday described the attack as "a complex, two-prolonged assault" with two squads of gunmen dashing into the mall from different floors at the same time and opening fire immediately.
The Shabab sent out several Twitter messages after the massacre suggesting that its fighters were responsible for an attack they said represented "just a very tiny fraction of what Muslims in Somalia experience at the hands of Kenyan invaders." One message said the Shabab had warned the Kenyan government "that failure to remove its forces from Somalia would have severe consequences." Kenya sent troops into Somalia in 2011 to help fight the Shabab and to prevent violence from spilling over across the border the countries share.