Kenya massacre: Survivor found after two days in wardrobe

A survivor of Kenya’s university massacre who hid in a wardrobe for two days too terrified to come out was rescued safely on Saturday, dehydrated but apparently unharmed, Kenya Red Cross said.

“A survivor has been discovered, she was hiding in a wardrobe,” Kenya Red Cross spokeswoman Arnolda Shiundu told AFP.

“She has been taken to hospital and she’s currently undergoing assessment by doctors.”


Agence France-Presse reports that the 19-year old woman was initially too scared to come out until a university lecturer she knew came to convince her that the police officers were not the Shebab gunmen who carried out the killing of nearly 150 of her fellow students, police said.

“She is the latest survivor, she has been hiding in a wardrobe for two days,” a police officer involved in the security operation said, who asked not to be named. “That is when she came out of the wardrobe and rushed to hospital.”

The student was rescued on Saturday morning, some 50 hours after the attack began. The gunmen were killed on Thursday evening.

The BBC said she told them she drank “body lotion when she felt hungry.”

Kenyan troops searching the building were alarmed when they heard sounds coming from inside a wardrobe.

“She kept asking for reassurance from the security forces they were not Al-Shebab before she could come out,” the police officer said.

“She was given milk and rushed to the Garissa hospital, where she is being observed before being given counselling.”

Four survivors were also found on Friday, Shiundu said.

Kenya’s Interior Cabinet Secretary, Joseph Nkaissery, on Saturday, confirmed that police had arrested three more suspects, in addition to two others, over an attack in Garissa University.