Excellant review of the Westgate Mall attack

‘Close Your Eyes and Pretend to Be Dead’ | Foreign Policy

Far from a dramatic three-day standoff, the assault on the Westgate Mall lasted only a few hours, almost all of it taking place before Kenyan security forces even entered the building. When they finally did, it was only to shoot at one another before going on an armed looting spree that resulted in the collapse of the rear of the building, destroyed with a rocket-propelled grenade. And there were only four gunmen, all of whom were buried in the rubble, along with much of the forensic evidence.

During the roughly three-and-a-half hours that the killers were loose in the mall, there was virtually no organized government response. But while Kenyan officials prevaricated, an unlikely coalition of licensed civilian gun owners and brave, resourceful individual police officers took it upon themselves to mount a rescue effort. Pieced together over 10 months from more than three dozen interviews with survivors, first responders, security officers, and investigators, the following account brings their story to life for the first time since the horrific terrorist attack occurred exactly two years ago.

An attack on a crowded shopping mall is a nightmare scenario everyone with a piece of the counter-terrorism role, or just an interest in it, has sweated over. It's easy to say it'll go better "here" than it did "there", but however it goes, it's not going to be pretty.

And I am reconsidering the easy way we dismiss so many of the techniques learned in classes like I wrote about in "Urban Defensive Tactics" class, 12/14/14 as being "inappropriate for non-LEOS or military."

Still highly unlikely we'll ever use them. And the conventional wisdom is that, in a case like that, even a trained, armed citizen should hunker down and defend self and other citizens, not go hunting the bad guys, if for no reason than to avoid being confused for a bad guy by the first responders, but...

And another scenario skills learned in classes like the one described in Shooter Self-Care Class @ NRA AM2015 (Update) would be invaluable.

Also, had not heard that al-Shabab had launched another attack in Kenya, in spring of this year, on a University, where they killed even more.