Update | ‘They knew everything’: Kenya survivors say gunmen had inside knowledge of campus before killing 148

The Islamic extremists who slaughtered 148 people at a college in northeast Kenya as they shouted “God is great” appeared to have planned extensively, even targeting a site where Christians had gone to pray, survivors said.

Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery updated the number of people killed by the gunmen to 148. He said 142 of the dead were students, three were policemen and three were soldiers.

Nkaissery added that 104 people were wounded.

In the capital of Nairobi, relatives of the victims went to a morgue where some bodies had been airlifted from the campus of Garissa University College in eastern Kenya. Screaming and crying family members were assisted by Red Cross staffers, who tried to console them.

The attack was the worst in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy by al-Qaeda that killed more than 200 people.

The assault on Thursday in Garissa was carried out by militants of the Somalia-based extremist group al-Shabab, a Somalia-based Islamic extremist group with ties to al-Qaeda. The organisation has struck the country several times in recent years, but this attack was the deadliest.