Kenyan christians mourn their dead in church on easter day.....

Kenyan churches used armed guards to protect their congregations Sunday, as Easter services were dedicated to the 148 victims of Thursday's massacre by al-Shabab militants at a university.

Ceremonies were held across Kenya in memory of those killed at Garissa University College by the Somalia-based Islamist extremist group.

For the several hundred members of Garissa's Christian minority, which is fearful following the attack by al-Shabab, Sunday's service was laden with emotion. The gunmen who attacked Garissa University College on Thursday singled out Christians for killing, though al-Shabab has a long record of killing Muslims over the years.

A woman sings during an Easter Sunday service in a church in Garissa, Kenya, April 5, 2015.

"We just keep on praying that God can help us, to comfort us in this difficult time," said Dominick Odhiambo, a worshipper who said he planned to abandon his job as a plumber in Garissa and leave for his hometown because he was afraid.

In Garissa, where masked gunmen in 2012 killed more than a dozen people in simultaneous gun and grenade raids on two churches, six soldiers guarded the town's main Christian church and about 100 worshippers ahead of Sunday mass.

"Thank you for coming, so many of you," Bishop Joseph Alessandro said to the congregation at Our Lady of Consolation Church. He said some of those who died in Thursday's attack would have been at the service, and he read condolence messages from around the world.

'Nowhere is safe'

"Nowhere is safe, but here at church you can be with God and console yourself," said Meli Muasya at Garissa's walled Catholic Church.

In Mombasa, "we are very concerned about the security of our churches and worshippers, especially this Easter period, and also because it is clear that these attackers are targeting Christians," Willybard Lagho, a Mombasa-based Catholic priest and chairman of the Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics (CICC), told Reuters.

Lagho said churches in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa were hiring armed police and private security guards for mass on Easter Sunday. Christians make up 83 percent of Kenya's 44 million population.

During a televised address Saturday, President Uhuru Kenyatta declared a three-day mourning period to begin Sunday, appealing to Kenyans to safeguard the nation's "peace and stability."

Kenyatta stressed his belief that "Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance." He said “the radicalization that breeds terrorism” is conducted “in the full glare of day.”

Also Sunday, Kenya identified one of the al-Shabab gunmen who massacred students at a northeastern university as the son of a Kenyan government official, Interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka told Reuters.

Abdirahim Abdullahi was one of the four gunmen who attacked the Garissa University College campus on Thursday, killing nearly 150 people, according to a Reuters report.

Njoka told Reuters in a text message: “The father had reported to security agents that his son had disappeared from home … and was helping the police try to trace his son by the time the Garissa terror attack happened."

Meanwhile, Kenya's security chief defended the response by special forces to the attacks.

Criticism of special forces

The French news agency AFP reported that it took at least seven hours for special forces to arrive at the scene of the massacre after flying from the capital, Nairobi, hours after other security personnel fought with the militants.

Some journalists who drove the same 365-kilometer distance are reported to have arrived before the special forces.

Several Kenyan newspapers on Sunday were strongly critical of the government's response.

"This is negligence on a scale that borders on the criminal," the Nation wrote in its editorial on Sunday, recalling how survivors said "the gunmen, who killed scores of students with obvious relish, took their time."

Credits to: Reuters africa.