Terrorized Kenyan Town Loses Doctors, Nurses

Most civil servants in Garissa are from somewhere else, and after Thursday’s terrorist attack, they’re going home.

















People arrive to view the bodies of the suspected attackers on Garissa University.


Carl De Souza / Getty Images














GARISSA, Kenya — For hours this morning, the local hospital was empty.

The bodies of the students killed at Garissa University, in Kenya's most deadly terrorist attack in nearly 10 years, had all been flown to Nairobi. The survivors had been nursed to health, or nursed well enough to make their way home. And with the emergency largely over, the non-local staff had left, too.

At least 70 of doctors and nurses, who aren't from Garissa, had felt too unsafe, and too exhausted, to continue, a hospital administrator who was not authorized to speak publicly said.

"They've really done more than any one person can stand," he said. "You can't blame them for leaving the job."

Officials say 147 people were killed when gunmen from al-Shabaab, the Somali terror group, stormed Garissa University.

Like many students on campus, most public servants — especially teachers and medical workers — come from elsewhere to work in Garissa, a steamy outpost that is the last real town in Kenya before the Somali border.

The administrator said local volunteers had stepped up to help keep the hospital running. But at 10 a.m. Saturday, the non-emergent medical wards were empty of staff. A man stabbed in a cell phone robbery last night lay untended on a bed without sheets. He said he hadn't seen any medical staff since someone replaced his IV drip, already empty again.

The hospital was still waiting waited to receive more survivors of Thursday's attack. One woman was brought in rescued from her hiding place on the roof of a hostel, where students live. She told News she had covered herself with laundry to avoid the attackers. She had been brought to the hospital for a checkup and trauma counseling.

About an hour later, an ambulance was dispatched for a half-dozen other survivors, said by another hospital staffer to have hidden in the rafters of their rooms. Two more survivors, the hospital administrator was overhead saying on his phone, "were brought out of the water tank...and they are saying there are more in the ceilings."

Local residents flocked to the hospital grounds. They had heard that the bodies of the attackers killed Thursday were going to be publicly displayed, and people wanted to see them. Roughly 100 people gathered behind yellow police tape, staring at the tiny morgue and waiting for hours in the merciless sun.

"So many times the government has said they have killed terrorists," said Abdi Mohamed, "but we have not seen it."

Last year, in late November, al-Shabaab hijacked a bus full of teachers on their way home from their posting in nearby Mandera, separating the passengers by religion and executing the Christians. Days later, Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto claimed the government had killed 100 terrorists in Mogadishu. Skepticism quickly surfaced on social media.







































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