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A woman is comforted by a relative yesterday after identifying the body of her son at the city mortuary in Nairobi. Kenyan troops and rescue workers scoured the wreckage of a Nairobi shopping mall for bodies and booby-trapped explosives after a four-day siege by Islamist gunmen left 67 dead and dozens more missing. — AFP

JOHANNESBURG. — A British woman thought to be linked to the Nairobi mall attacks used an assumed South African identity to take out bank loans and rent property in Johannesburg, local media reported yesterday.
Samantha Lewthwaite — wanted by Kenyan police for alleged involvement in a separate terror plot – used the known alias Natalie Faye Webb to rent at least three properties and run up debts of US$8 600, according to the eNews Channel Africa (eNCA).

The 29-year-old Muslim convert — nicknamed the “White Widow” because her husband was among the 2005 London suicide bombers — signed rental leases around Johannesburg, but it was unclear whether she lived at any of the premises.

According to credit records released by eNCA, she was listed as living in the city’s predominantly South Asian neighbourhood of Mayfair for four years.

Kenya’s foreign minister has said a British woman was among the Islamist attackers who shot dead dozens of people at a Nairobi shopping mall from Saturday.

President Uhuru Kenyatta later said the reports could not be confirmed.
But Kenyan authorities issued a wanted notice for Lewthwaite after she entered the country from Tanzania’s north-eastern Lunga and Namanga border posts in February and August 2011.

She was using a South African passport under the name of Natalie Faye Webb.
Two months later South African clothing stores signalled debt defaults worth almost US$2 700.
In August 2012 a Johannesburg court issued an order against her for default on US$2 800 debt with South Africa’s First Rand Bank.
Lewthwaite was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of four suicide bombers who attacked the London transport network.

The attack, that was carried out in July 2005, claimed 52 lives.
A local terror expert and academic said earlier this week that she regularly travels to South Africa.
They also managed to reveal that she stayed in South African suburbs of Johannesburg earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Kenya’s interior minister said yesterday that only an “insignificant” number of bodies were thought to remain in the wreckage of Nairobi’s Westgate shopping centre.

Countries including Britain, the United States, Israel, Germany and Canada are assisting the probe into the four-day siege by Islamist gunmen, which left 67 dead and dozens more missing, Joseph Ole Lenku told reporters.

“We strongly believe . . . that there are insignificant numbers of bodies still holed up,” the minister said, playing down fears that the bodies of 71 people listed as missing by the Red Cross may still be inside.

President Uhuru Kenyatta announced an end to the 80-hour bloodbath late Tuesday, with the “immense” loss of 61 civilians and six members of the security forces. Police said the death toll was provisional.

“It is an elaborate process. Among the things that are going on now are fingerprinting, DNA identification (and) ballistic examinations,” Lenku said of the probe, adding that the evidence collection would take at least a week.

“We expect the exercise of the forensic audit will take not less than seven days, but for the exact results coming out of that, we leave for the experts to determine.”

He also said he could not comment on media reports that the attackers had rented a shop inside the mall before the attack.
“We are getting a lot of information, and suggestions and input from people of good will, also from rumour mongers,” he said. “As for whether they had a shop in the mall, it is something that we cannot categorically give you a position on.” — AFP.