The identities on two of the four Westgate Mall attackers have been released, confirming the attackers previously lived in Somali refugee camps in Kenya, the Associated Press reported.
Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, 23, was one of the four men who opened fire in Nairobi's Westgate Mall on Sept. 21, the AP reported. The men were part of the Al-Shabab Islamist extremist group which is also affiliated with al-Qaida.
Dhuhulow once lived in a refugee camp with over 50,000 Somali refugees in northwestern Kenya, two security officials told the AP. Officials also confirmed court documents released last week revealing Mohammed Abdinur Said as another attacker, the AP reported.
A Kenyan security official, who remained anonymous told the AP, Dhuhulow and other attackers, lived in a refugee camp named Kakuma, which is run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and houses 101,000 refugees, the AP reported.
Raouf Mazou, head of UNHCR, told the AP the refugee camp has cooperated with the Kenyan government in the investigation but nobody by those names has been brought to his attention, the AP reported. Mazou said he was "not aware of any specific case and not the name that you mentioned."
Said and Dhuhulow have both been identified as two of the gunmen from the mall's video footage, but FBI and other agencies are continuing the investigation on the other two unidentified shooters, according to the AP. Until last week, no information on the shooters had been obtained.
Pseudonyms on the four attackers have been released by the Kenyan government, but they've failed in providing real names for all four attackers, the AP reported.
Officials said the remains of four people suspected of being the shooters were collected from the mall but it is unclear whether the remains match the the identified gunmen in the video, according to the AP.
Kenya, which has housed refugees for two decades, has expressed security concerns since 2011 due to the half a million refugees living inside the camps, including Kakuma, housing 54,000 Somalis, and Dadaab, which is the target of grenade bombs and attacks, near the Somali border where 338,000 Somalis live, the AP reported.
Due to the increasing insecurity in the refugee camps, Kenya, Somalia and the UNHCR signed an agreement on Sunday stating the 475,000 registers Somali refugees inside Kenya will be given support if they chose to return home, according to the AP.
UNHCR leader Mazou stated the camp has assisted in increasing security within the camps, which have come under increasing attacks in the last years.
"Clearly there was some insecurity in the camps. Things have improved since Kenyan security has been able to deploy additional personnel in the Dadaab area," Mazou said. "This agreement is not about Kenya telling people to leave but about encouraging the international community to do more in south-central Somalia where these refugees come from."
