Kenyan military and police surrounded the mall, which had been hosting a children's day event, and helicopters flew overhead. Some witnesses said the gunmen had told Muslims to leave and said non-Muslims would be targeted. Kaigwa-Okoye was among them, joining about 20 people who took shelter for about five hours in a women's bathroom cubicle. Of course, there was the concern of I.E.D.’s or that they would throw a grenade or shoot. In a televised speech late Saturday, Kenyatta said his nation has "overcome" such attacks before, refusing to budge from its values or relinquish his security. Q and A: Al-Shabaab grew amid Somalia's lawlessness 
 
 Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked militant group based in Somalia with ties to Nairobi's Eastleigh district and whose most recent attack of this scale came July 2010 in Uganda's capital, claimed responsibility for the carnage and vowed not to negotiate with Kenyan authorities.
– The death toll from an attack on an upscale mall in Nairobi today has now reached at least 39, with another 150 injured, the country's president, Uhuru Kenyatta, said in a national TV address. Kenyatta says he "personally lost family members" in the attack on the Westgate mall, the BBC reports. "We shall hunt down the perpetrators wherever they run to," he promised Kenyans in his address. "We shall get to them and we shall punish them for this heinous crime." Americans are among those injured, reports CNN, though no further details were available. "They just came in and threw a grenade," one witness tells AP. "We were running and they opened fire. They were shouting and firing." The Somali militant group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for what it is calling the "Westgate spectacle", reports the BBC. On Twitter, al-Shabab says "all Muslims inside #Westgate were escorted out by the Mujahideen before beginning the attack," reports CNN. It also tweeted that it still had control of the mall, but after 10 hours of fighting, Kenyan police tweeted that they have "isolated and pinned down" the attackers. A New York Times photographer happened to be nearby when the attackers opened fire—his photos from inside the mall are incredible, though very graphic.