Kenya has announced that it will arm private security officers guarding public places in the aftermath of Tuesday’s attack on a luxury hotel and office complex.<\/p>\n
The siege, which lasted 18 hours and left 21 people dead, was claimed by the al-Qaeda-linked Somalia-based armed group, al-Shabab.<\/p>\n
Armed contractors will “guard key installations” where there is “a lot of human traffic”, Fazul Mahamed, director general of the Private Security Regulatory Authority, said in a media briefing late on Friday.
\nAt least two security guards were among the dead in Tuesday’s attack at the Dusit hotel complex in Nairobi.<\/p>\n
Private security companies, which have long called on the government to allow them to issue guns to security guards, welcomed the decision.<\/p>\n
“We feel safer now. This is something we have been calling for,” said Abdirahman Mohamed, managing director of Ismax Security, which employs more than 1,000 security officers.<\/p>\n
“Earlier, when responding to a security situation, we had to call for the police and that was not convenient as it took a long time,” he told Al Jazeera.
\n‘Reflexive response’<\/p>\n
Security experts, however, have voiced concern over the haste with which the government is acting.<\/p>\n
“This is a poor move…It is a reflexive response,” Abdullahi Boru, a Horn of Africa security expert, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
“It will double the number of arms in private hands, which could backfire in the long run,” he continued, adding: “It further demonstrates once again, how Kenyan authorities think they can fight terrorism using force.”<\/p>\n
The government has said the security guards will have to go through a rigorous six-month-long compulsory training course on handling guns before they are issued firearms.<\/p>\n
The attack on the Dusit hotel complex was not the first time the Kenyan capital has been targeted by gunmen from al-Shabab.<\/p>\n
In September 2013, fighters from the group attacked the Westgate shopping mall in a four-day-long siege that left more than 65 people dead.<\/p>\n
Source:Al-Jazeera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kenya has announced that it will arm private security officers guarding public places in the aftermath of Tuesday’s attack on a luxury hotel and office complex. The siege, which lasted 18 hours and left 21 people dead, was claimed by the al-Qaeda-linked Somalia-based armed group, al-Shabab. Armed contractors will “guard key installations” where there is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15727"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/so\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}