This time in Kenya, where gunnies belonging to the Somalia-based terrorist group Al-Shabaab
... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda...
massacred at least 147 people, mainly students, at the Garissa University campus during a 15 hour-long siege, the worst ever attack on Kenyan soil since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi.
The town of Garissa lies almost 200km from the border with Somalia, and the attack is the latest act of retaliation carried out by the Al-Shabaab against a joint Somali-Kenyan military operation to destroy the Al Qaeda-linked group.
For Paks, the atrocity bore a chilling resemblance to the APS Beautiful Downtown Peshawar
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
attack less than four months ago.
Around the same number of students and teachers were murdered that day by snuffies of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain who went from classroom to classroom hunting down unarmed children, leaving behind a trail of blood on scattered schoolbooks, devastated families and a nation in mourning.
Earlier, even among the most violent of ideologically driven groups there were some red lines. Now, however, the distinction between combatants and innocents is increasingly blurred.
Nothing is sacred, not even children or young people studying in schools and colleges. In fact, students and/or educational infrastructure -- not to mention other soft targets -- are increasingly being targeted by terrorists, whether by Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
in Nigeria or the TTP in Pakistain.
A worldview more twisted and nihilistic can scarcely be imagined. There was another sinister element to the attack in Garissa, one that is common to several recent acts of terrorism by Al-Shabaab in Kenya.
The campus attackers singled out Christians for murder, a move calculated to drive a wedge between the country's vast Christian majority and its sizeable Moslem minority.
It would be doubly unfortunate were such intentions to bear fruit, for nothing would suit religious bully boyz more than a world riven along the lines of faith and engaged in a never-ending, apocalyptic battle.