Dozens more bodies believed to be buried under rubble of Nairobi shopping mall

A number of bodies are still believed to be buried under rubble of the Nairobi shopping mall after the gruesome four-day terrorist siege.

As a mortuary in Nairobi said it was preparing for up to 160 new corpses, an intelligence source told the Guardian there was evidence that the number of bodies buried under rubble could be in the hundreds. The source added that at least one attacker was still engaged in conflict with security forces inside the mall, five days after the shopping centre was attacked on a busy Saturday morning. It said that there were 200 workers in Nakumatt supermarket and 800 people shopping. The walls of Nakumatt collapsed and there are a lot of bodies inside.

According to the report, Al-Shabaab, the Somali-based, al-Qaeda-linked group behind the attack, claimed the government had carried out a demolition of the building, burying 137 hostages. The Kenyan government rejected claims that any militants remained alive, or that they had demolished part of the building. The government added that the mall's upper–level car park had collapsed, bringing the second level down on to the ground floor on top of at least eight civilians and one or more attackers.

Government spokesman Manoah Esipisu said the number of dead, which stood at 67, already included the bodies of those buried under the rubble, and denied the figure would rise further. Kenya's interior minister, Joseph Ole Lenku, said the process of determining the number of dead and gathering evidence from the mall could take a further week, the report added.