Britain’s notorious “White Widow” may have been among the terrorists who unleashed the bloody assault on a Nairobi mall over the weekend, according to a report Monday.
Three sources — an intelligence officer and two soldiers — told Reuters that one of the slain killers was a white woman, which fueled speculation that she was the jihadist widow of one of the suicide bombers who launched the attack on London’s transit system in 2005, murdering 52 and wounding 700.
Other soldiers have claimed that they saw a white woman in a veil shouting orders to gunmen in Arabic during the mall massacre, which killed at least 62.
Still, when asked if the dead woman at the mall was Samantha Lewthwaite, dubbed the “White Widow” by the British press, the intelligence officer said, “We don’t know.”
Earlier in the day, Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku had denied that any women were involved. “There are no women, all the terrorists are men. Some of them had dressed like women,” he said.
Shortly after the report of Lewthwaite’s possible death, al Shabaab, the al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group behind the mall assault, used its Twitter feed to claim that she was safe, the Daily Mail said.
The siege continued into its fourth day Tuesday morning as explosions and gunfire could be heard outside the Westgate Mall.
Security forces carried a body out of a building that was still on fire — even as the Kenyan government continued to assure people on Twitter that the situation was coming to an end.
“We have triumphed,” the official Kenya police account tweeted just before the new round of violence erupted.
The head of their police department also sounded overly optimistic about the security raid on the mall.
“Taken control of all the floors,” Inspector General David Kimaiyo said on Twitter. “We’re not here to feed the attackers with pastries but to finish and punish them.”
As the siege continued, a security expert said that at least 10 people were still being held.
At least three terrorists have been killed, officials said.
The Kenyan Foreign Minister said “two or three” Americans were among those who attacked the mall.
Ten suspects had been rounded up at the Nairobi airport in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, three alleged al Shabaab suicide bombers appeared in Brooklyn federal court to face terror charges. The defendants — Ali Yasin Ahmed, Madhi Hashi and Mohamed Yusuf — were captured in Africa last year.
Additional reporting by Selim Algar