Garissa survivor: everybody was running for their lives

On Thursday, Al-Shabaab gunmen stormed into the university compound in Kenya near the border with Somalia, killing at least 148 people.

Lavenda Mutesi, 18, who on Easter Sunday returned home to Nairobi to be with family and friends, said she was forced to jumpe over a fence to escape the attack.

She said: “We were not thinking. We just ran. What we could see was just getting out of that place and exiting that place. So we just ran to the fence, jumped the fence then go out of the school.

“All we could do was just run. No one was looking back, no one wanted to see what was happening. Because everybody was running for their lives.”

Missing friend

The teenager also lost her best friend Mary Mushiri in the attack.

She added: “For me she is not gone. And if she’s gone all I can hold on to are the memories of me and her laughing making jokes and everything else.

“I don’t want to think of it. I wish she was not dead. For me she is not and she’ll keep on living.”

The gunmen who attacked Garissa University on Thursday singled out Christians for killing, though Al-Shabab has a long record of killing Muslims.