Soldiers do shopping - level 3
More shocking footage has emerged from Nairobi’s Westgate mall. CCTV film captures the events during the four-day siege with Al Shabaab gunmen last month at the shopping centre.
But this latest footage appears to show government soldiers helping themselves to goods in an abandoned supermarket. The troops enter the Nakumat holding their guns, and then are caught on camera leaving carrying plastic bags, looking like they’ve just been shopping.
Other soldiers appear to go through items at various counters next to the supermarket entrance.
Kenyan MPs and the Army, who are investigating the attack, have repeatedly denied allegations that troops looted the shopping centre, during the four-day stand-off. Instead, they’ve accused business owners of using the allegations as a way of getting compensation from insurance firms. This, they say, is due to the fact that most had policies that covered them for theft, but not for terrorism.
The official death toll from the attack remains at sixty-one civilians, six soldiers and five attackers, although more bodies have been recovered from the rubble in the last few days.
Difficult words:
emerge (appear)
troops (group of soldiers)
allegation (statement that somebody did something wrong but that has no proof)
loot (steal things)
due to (because of)
theft (crime of stealing)
death toll (number of dead people)
rubble (pieces of a broken building).