Bullets whizzed past as her schoolmates fled in the dark. Gunshots pierced their heads, one after another.
In
the chaos, Titus decided she was safer in the closet. But her refuge
was short lived -- the gunmen who raided her college in the Kenyan town
of Garissa on Thursday came for her an hour later.
They led her and dozens of other students into a community room normally used for viewing television.
Lie down, the attackers told them, lecturing them on how the Quran forbids the killing of women. They killed the men.
Not much later, they turned the weapons on the women.
"He was telling him, 'shoot them, shoot them'," she said of a terrorist.
Titus survived by smearing a friend's blood on her face and playing dead.
"I just rubbed myself, soaked myself with that blood," she said Friday
at a makeshift center for evacuated students. "They skipped me."
Students still missing
More
horrific details emerged Saturday about the terrorist attack, the
deadliest in Kenya since al Qaeda bombed the United States Embassy in
Nairobi in 1998. This week's attack by Somali militant group Al-Shabaab
left 147 people dead.
And two days later, some people still don't know whether their loved ones are alive.
Zeddy
Godwano has not slept for hours; his brother is still missing. Godwano
has looked for him at major hospitals in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi,
where most of the wounded were airlifted.
"Since
we heard news in the radios and televisions, I was worried and it made
me rush here in Nairobi to look for him," he said.
Broken, shocked
Most
friends and relatives streamed in at dawn, patiently awaiting
confirmation of the fate of their loved ones. Others lay on the ground,
wailing, too broken to stand.
"They
are coming when they are very shocked ... when they are very confused,"
said Professor Catherine Oshotha, a psychologist. "They do not know
whether their loved ones are here ... whether they've died. They are
coming here because they've tried to contact their children and they are
not getting them or they are not hearing from them."
Kenyan police arrested five suspects Friday, Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said.
The
militants killed 142 students, three security officers and two
university security personnel. The attack left 104 people injured, some
of them in critical condition, Nkaissery said.
As
search and recovery efforts continued, police found a man who was not a
student hiding under a bed, sources said. He was taken into custody
and was being treated as a suspect, sources close to the search said.
After
the man was discovered, authorities conducted an additional search of
the building. Three people, all students, were found alive. One female
student was under a pile of bodies; another was in a closet. A male
student was hiding in a bathroom, the sources said.
Most of the victims had been shot in the back of the head, a medic told CNN.
"They're facing down, always," a worker with St. John's ambulance service said Friday.
The Education Ministry has closed the university indefinitely.
Credit: CNN
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