UPDATED WITH PHOTOS! Death Toll In Kenya Varsity Attack Hits 147

The death toll in the attack by al-Shabab Islamist militants on a university in north-eastern Kenya has risen to 147, Kenyan government officials say.
They added that the operation to secure the the Garissa University College campus was now over, with all four attackers killed.
The evacuation of surviving students is now under way.
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Four counties near the Kenya-Somalia border, Garissa, Wajir, Mandera and Tana River, would have dusk-to-dawn curfews imposed, disaster management officials said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned what he called a “terrorist attack” and said the UN was ready to help Kenya “prevent and counter terrorism and violent extremism”.

A BBC Somali Service reporter says Mohamed Kuno was headmaster at an Islamic school in Garissa before he quit in 2007. He goes by the nickname “Dulyadeyn”, which means “ambidextrous” in Somali.
Earlier, al-Shabab told the BBC its members were holding Christians hostage and freeing Muslims.

Student Augustine Alanga told the BBC’s Newsday programme: “It was horrible, there was shooting everywhere.”
He said it was “pathetic” that the university was only guarded by two police officers. Security forces have laid siege to the area around the university
Student Collins Wetangula said when the gunmen entered his hostel he could hear them opening doors and asking if the people inside were Muslims or Christians, the AP news agency reports.
Al-Shabab says it attacked the university because it is at war with Kenya, BBC Africa analyst Mary Harper reports.
Kenyan troops entered Somalia in October 2011 in an effort to stop the Islamists from crossing the long, porous border between the two countries and kidnapping people – but their presence achieved the opposite effect, provoking al-Shabab to increase its activity in Kenya, our correspondent adds.



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