Kenyan troops are battling into the night in a bid to end a terrifying stand-off with Somali militants holding hostages inside a shopping mall, with police warning the death toll of 68 could rise sharply.
An Australian-UK dual citizen is among those confirmed dead. He was named this afternoon as architect Ross Langdon.
Langdon was a founding director of prize-winning architecture firm Regional Associates, which has offices in London and Melbourne.
The dual Australian-UK national grew up in Tasmania and worked on projects around the world, including in Uganda and Rwanda.
In 2010, Mr Langdon received the University of Sydney’s Young Alumni Award in recognition of his pursuit of excellence in the field of architecture on projects located across Australia, Europe and Africa.
Tributes were flowing on Twitter on Monday for Mr Langdon and his wife Elif Yavuz.
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“Horrible news that Ross Langdon and his wife were killed in the Nairobi attacks,” Sydney architect Marcus Trimble wrote on the social network.
Designer Liane Rossler said the couple were “very special souls”.
“Such tragic news about beautiful Ross Langdon & his pregnant partner Elif Yavuz in Nairobi,” she wrote.
Tasmanian sculptor Peter Adams wrote on his blog that Mr Langdon was “an architect doing wondrous things”, including pro bono work for a hospital in Kenya.
They were among 68 people confirmed dead in the attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.
Kenyan troops are battling into the night in a bid to end a terrifying stand-off with Somali militants holding hostages inside a shopping mall.
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The army says it’s managed to secure most of the upmarket, part Israeli-owned Westgate complex, and that most of the hostages have been rescued. It says it’s trying to bring the 36-hour-long bloodbath to a “speedy conclusion”.
READ MORE: Australians describe deadly attack.
Security and intelligence sources told AFP that Israeli agents are also assisting in the operation, and Kenya’s National Disaster Operation Centre says a “major engagement” with the al Qaeda-linked Shebab fighters is underway.
“Our concern is to rescue all hostages alive and that is why the operation is delicate,” the Kenya Defence Forces said in a situation update.
“All efforts are underway to bring this matter to a speedy conclusion,” it said, adding four of its soldiers have been wounded in what appears to be a final battle to secure the mall, which is popular with wealthy Kenyans and expatriates.
“The criminals are now all located in one place within the building … We have as good a chance to successfully neutralise the terrorists as we can hope for,” Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a speech to the nation.
“They shall not get away with their despicable and beastly acts,” Kenyatta said in an emotional speech, in which he announced he had lost a nephew and his fiancee in the attack.
A Kenyan security source confirmed that Israelis “are rescuing the hostages and the injured”. The Israeli foreign ministry refused to confirm or deny its agents were involved.
Terrified witnesses recounted scenes of horror as the masked gunmen tossed grenades and sprayed automatic gunfire in the packed centre in a brazen attack around midday on Saturday, sending panicked shoppers fleeing.
Officials estimated some 200 people have been wounded, and the Red Cross has appealed for blood donors.
But police sources who had entered the building on Sunday evening said they feared that death toll, now confirmed at 68, “could be much, much higher … judging from the bodies sighted inside” that have yet to be recovered.
Somalia’s Shebab rebels said the carnage was in retaliation for Kenya’s military intervention in Somalia, where African Union troops are battling the Islamists.
The dead also includes three Britons, two French women, two Canadians including a diplomat, a Chinese woman, two Indians, a South Korean, a South African and a Dutch woman, according to their governments. Also killed was Ghanaian poet and former UN envoy Kofi Awoonor.
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