It was the kind of attack more common in the US than Kenya, except for its sectarian component. A group of black-clad gunmen shoot up the upscale Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, leaving at least 11 dead. AP tells us the attack took place as a "children's day event" was underway at the mall, although it doesn't say if any of the casualties were children. The gunmen apparently taregted non-Muslims, giving Muslims the opportunity to leave before they started shooting people down—which raises the question of why everyone didn't just pretend to be Muslim (apart from maybe a few Christian fanatics determined to die for the faith).

An incredibly garbled BBC account tells us in the lead, "Eleven people have died in a gun battle inside a Nairobi shopping centre," but it appears to have been a massacre, not a shoot-out. Only one of the gunmen is reported among the dead, and the rest seem to have been mall-goers. Worse, just two lines into the story, we are told "The Kenyan Red Cross says 30 died." So is it 11 or 30? Worse still, we are told: "The Somali militant group al-Shabab has said it carried out the attack. On its Twitter feed, the al-Qaeda-linked group said it confirmed it was behind what it called the 'Westgate spectacle'." Yet just one line later, we get: "No group has said it carried out the attack." How do you square that one, BBC? Hire some copy-editors please.