French press review 4 April 2015

Al-Shebab's anti-Christian barbarism unleashed on Kenya and Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran grab front-page attention of French press. The massacre of 147 university students in Kenya dominate  reactions from the French dailies.

"Kenya mourns after Garissa university attack," headlines Le Monde. The paper publishes transcripts of emotional remarks made by Kenya top Islamic council leader Abdullahi Salat in a telephone interview after learning about Al-Shebab's latest killing spree.

"We are at war against monsters," Salat is quoted as saying with a broken voice after a Somali movement of "young combatants" known as Harakat al-Shebab claimed responsibility for the massacre. Le Monde reports that the gunmen asked the students about their faiths, allowed Muslims to go and then opened fire on the rest.

Libération puts the fight force of the Al-Shebab Islamists at between 5,000 and 10,000.

Le Figaro has made the "anti-Christian barbarism going on in the Middle East and Africa", the topic of its special supplement this weekend.

Liberation for its part argues that the politics of terror have eroded Al-Shebab's power base. According to the left-leaning publication, the armed Islamists carried out the massacre on the eve of the Easter holidays in this predominantly Christian country. "Your holidays are going to be very special," one of the gunmen is quoted as saying, as he sprayed bullets on students still getting out of bed that fateful morning.

Their goal is to create hatred between Kenya's Christians and Muslims, writes Libé, the paper explaining that this was already the case in Mandera, the small impoverished Kenyan town on the border with Ethiopia and Somalia where 36 non-Muslims were executed in cold blood in December.

Several French papers maintain that Al-Shebab's goal is to force Kenya to pull out her 4,000 troops serving with an African Union force in Somalia.

Their barbarism is only likely to erode the political base of Al Shebab in Somalia, holds Libération. The paper beleives the strategy further emboldens Kenya's determination to fight terror.

Kenya is already constructing of a wall along the 700km border with Somalia, after dismantling several Al-Shebab cells inside Kenya. Unfortunately for Kenya, Libération explains, some of the Al-Shebab operatives are Kenyan citizens. The masterminds of the Westgate massacre in Nairobi in which 67 people were killed in 2013 were Kenyan nationals from Garissa, it explains. Garissa it points out, is also the hometown of ex-Koranic school teacher Mohamed Kuno, named as the instigator of Thursday's bloody attack at Garissa University.

Le Parisien claims that the killers knew what they were doing . According to the publication, the attackers picked a soft target, put further at risk by "crippling corruption and mismanaged security".

Barack Obama's nuclear deal with America's foe Iran is Le Monde's front-page story this weekend. The paper points out that, under the historic accord signed in Lausanne on Thursday, the International Atomic agency (IAEA) will be able to inspect Iran’s nuclear installations for 10-15 years, adding that Iran will not be able to make a nuclear bomb within a year, as it is alleged to have planned.

According to Le Monde, while a World-Cup-winning atmosphere floats in Tehran, the country's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is desperate to avoid becoming an Iranian Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union who lost power when his country opened up to the business world.

With the deal, US President Barack Obama scored important points over his Republican opponents in Congress who are determined to vote against it, writes Le Monde.

According to the paper, Israel feels betrayed by the Western superpowers, a message Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has sent out since Friday in his denunciation of the accord.

Libération,  agrees the deal is a historic but expensive diplomatic victory for Obama which is a welcome gift 20 months before the end of his presidency.

For the left-leaning newspaper, the applause that greeted the signing of the draft accord in Tehran undermines the agenda of radical clerics in Iran, leaving President Hassan Rohani in a position of strength. The nuclear deal puts Tehran on course to revamp its economy, which is crippled by 35 years of sanctions, and to reconquer its vast Shia-Muslim religious and cultural empire in a large portion of the Middle East extending from Baghdad to Sanaa, according to Libération.