Two good friends, Abdallah Dahir and Feisal Ahmed, were among those who lost their lives in the dusitD2 Hotel terror attack last Tuesday.
Mr Dahir, a Wajir County native and an employee of Adam Smith NGO housed at the 14 Riverside Drive complex, was having lunch with Mr Ahmed, when the terrorists, linked to Islamist group Al-Shabaab, sprayed bullets on their table.
The two died from the shooting.
Mr Dahir was a communications officer while Mr Ahmed, who was born and bred in Nairobi’s South C area, graduated from a Sudan university with a degree in communications.
Mr Ahmed, popularly known as Zola, wedded the love of his life recently.
One of the two men’s close kin, Yasin Njama, confirmed news about the friends’ death.
Mr Njama, a businessman in Nairobi, eulogised the two men as “really good people”.
“They were really good people. They were born and raised in Kenya. One of them was the sole bread winner of a family of around 23 people. One had a bachelor’s degree while the other had a master’s degree. One of the two men tied the knot recently with his partner, and was yet to have a baby with her. We have lost very good people, who were extremely hardworking and played an important role in nation-building,” Mr Njama told Citizen TV at Chiromo Funeral Home, where he had gone to collect the bodies of Mr Ahmed and Mr Dahir.
Mr Njama’s son, Mahmoud Yasin Njama, was also with Mr Dahir and Mr Ahmed in the 14 Riverside Drive complex, when the terrorists struck.
“A few minutes past 3pm, I got a call from my son, Mahmoud, who told me that terrorists had stormed the complex. I was so frantic and panicky. Nine minutes later, he called, and told me: ‘God bless, I am out of danger’. Sadly, his close friends and kinsmen in the building – Dahir and Ahmed – died in the attack,” said Mr Njama.