NAIROBI — A university where Islamic extremists killed 148 people nine months ago reopened Monday, an event welcomed by many Kenyans as a victory against the jihadis.
"Just by opening the university we have won the war against Al Shabab," said Khadija Mohamed, who was a counselor at the school when it was attacked last April, and who was among the returning staff and faculty. About 60 students are expected when some classes resume next week and the bulk of them, some 600, in September.
Even though there was high security, returning to the college in Garissa, a town in eastern Kenya, was difficult for Mohamed, who remembers the carnage and the victims.
"Coming back to this college gives me a flashback of the killings," she said. "As their counselor, the students were very close to me. They were like my children. I lost many of my children."
Four gunmen from the Somali extremist group stormed the university at dawn April 2.