(CNN) -- We're not done yet.
That was the message
terrorists of Al-Shabaab gave to Kenya on Wednesday, as officials still
sorted through rubble and clues left in the wake of the recent massacre
that took 67 lives at a Nairobi shopping mall.
The Somali militant group handed the threatening statement to regional media, which passed it on to CNN.
For four days, starting
on September 21, Al-Shabaab fighters spread gunfire and flames through
Nairobi's Westgate Shopping Mall, leaving it partially destroyed,
stained in blood and littered with bodies.
Members of Kenya's
government were mute about what they had seen inside after emerging from
an inspection there earlier this week.
CNN learned that the Westgate mall attackers tortured some of the hostages.
Military doctors said
militants severed hands, cut off noses and, in some cases, hanged
hostages. CNN has seen photographic evidence of one dead victim with a
hand amputated.
In the coming days and
weeks, members of Parliament are expected to grill intelligence
officials to find out more about how the attack occurred.
Forewarned?
A number of Kenya's
Cabinet members and defense officials were warned about the possibility
that Al-Shabaab was planning to carry out such an attack a year before
gunman stormed the Nairobi mall, according to several police and
intelligence sources.
The warnings were made
by the country's National Intelligence Service as part of regular
situational reports given to Cabinet members, the inspector general of
police, members of the National Security Advisory Council and military
intelligence officials.
CNN has seen an
electronic version of those reports, which contain an extensive list of
terror threats from several regions across Kenya over an extended
period, but they also specify Al-Shabaab posed a threat to several
targets, including Westgate Shopping Mall.
The news about the
intelligence warnings comes amid revelations that the mall favored by
Westerners and tourists was long considered a possible terror target.
Al-Shabaab made
statements claiming responsibility, including saying on Twitter that it
sent the gunmen in retaliation for Kenya's involvement in an African
Union military effort against the group, which is al Qaeda's proxy in
Somalia.
Kenyan forces killed
five terrorists, and 11 others are in custody over possible links to the
attacks, President Uhuru Kenyatta has said.
But an immense amount of
work remains to learn how Al-Shabaab was able to pull off such a
well-coordinated and brazen attack. The terror group was thought to be
badly bruised by recent losses in its Somalian homeland.
Kenyan military intervention
Last year, the Kenyan
military was part of a peacekeeping force that defeated Al-Shabaab
forces to liberate the key Somali port of Kismayo.
Since Kenya launched
attacks against Al-Shabaab in Somalia in 2011, the group has hurled
grenades at Kenyan churches, bus stops and other public places.
The mall attack was the
deadliest terror attack in Kenya since al Qaeda blew up the U.S. Embassy
there in 1998, killing 213 people.
Terrorism experts say
the attack bears eerie similarities to the 2008 siege of a hotel in
Mumbai, India, another upscale target with Western appeal.
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, a Pakistani terrorist group, held the hotel for more
than three days, killing 166 people.
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