Kenyan MPs investigating alleged security failings during the deadly assault on Nairobi's Westgate mall by Islamist gunmen have inspected the charred wreckage, where searches continue for 39 people still missing.
The four-day bloodbath at the upmarket shopping mall, which Kenyan forces brought to an end on Tuesday, left at least 67 people dead.
Politicians from both the parliament's national security and the defence and the foreign relations committee, visited the mall on Monday afternoon, entering the main hall, its floor littered with shattered glass and smeared in blood.
Shop owners reported their stores were looted during the siege, and photographs they posted on social media - including from a luxury jewellery shop - show shelves cleaned of goods.
The visit of the MPs launched the start of investigations, which will involve their quizzing of Kenyan security chiefs over the handling of the deadly raid.
"We have taken this matter extremely seriously," said Asman Kamama, head of the defence and the foreign relations committee.
"We want to promise you that as parliament we will investigate, establish and see whether the people who were directly in charge of our security slept on their jobs."
The Red Cross on Monday said the number of people still unaccounted for stood at 39, dropping from the previous figure of 61, after bodies were either identified, or those believed to have been missing were found to have not been at the mall.
Kenyan and foreign investigators continued to comb the carcass of the Westgate mall for clues on the perpetrators of the raid and ensuing siege.
Part of the rooftop parking of the mall collapsed after heavy explosions and a fierce fire, leaving the key area where the insurgents are understood to have made their final stand - along with possible hostages - buried under charred tonnes of concrete.
The MPs said they would also "relook and rethink" Kenya's hosting of some half a million Somali refugees, accusing the camps - such as the word's biggest such site, Dadaab, which hosts over 400,000 people - as being a "training ground" for Somali extremists.
