Nairobi--Kenyan special forces were not deployed to a university massacre in which 148 people died for at least seven hours, reports said Sunday, as the government defended the response.
Alarm bells rang at Kenya's elite Recce Company in Nairobi as soon as the first reports of Thursday's pre-dawn attack emerged.
But it took until just before 2:00 pm for the main team to reach the attack site in the northeastern town of Garissa, Kenya's major Nation newspaper said, noting that the first plane to the city carried the interior minister and police chief.
"This is negligence on a scale that borders on the criminal," the Nation wrote in its editorial on Sunday, recalling how survivors said "the gunmen, who killed scores of students with obvious relish, took their time".
Some journalists based in Nairobi who drove the 365 kilometres (225 miles) to Garissa after hearing the first reports of the attack arrived before the special forces, who came by air.
The Standard newspaper's editorial cartoon accused security forces of sleeping on the job, depicting a snake labelled "terror threat" waking a snoring security officer with a bite, as a dog barks, "too little, too late".
Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery has said the attack was "one of those incidents which can surprise any country," while President Uhuru Kenyatta paid his tribute to the three police and three soldiers killed, who paid "the ultimate price in their selfless service to Kenya."
But newspapers on Sunday were deeply critical of the government response.
AFP
