(CNN) - A 19-year-old student at Kenya's Garissa University College was rescued Saturday after spending more than 48 hours in a closet where she had hidden herself as Islamist gunmen conducted a murderous rampage on the campus.
Cynthia Cheroitich said she concealed herself in a cupboard, covering herself with clothes, when the Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab attacked the university on Thursday. Not having access to water, she drank body lotion instead.
Soldiers had to get the principal to tell the woman the siege was over before she emerged from her hiding place Saturday,
As she cowered in the cupboard, she heard the militants order her roommates outside.
"They told my other roommates who had hidden themselves under the bed," she told CNN. "They told them to go out. When they were outside now, they said if you don't know how to read to them in the Muslim word, whatever, you lie down. And then if you know, you go to the other side."
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday ordered flags to be flown at half-staff and three days of mourning for the assault that left 147 people dead.
In a televised address to his nation, Kenyatta said he wanted to assure the victims' "families that the government will do everything possible to support the victims and their families."
The Somalia-based terrorist group Al-Shabaab has not only claimed for the responsibility for the massacre, it's threatened "another bloodbath" in Kenya.
The threat drew a sharp response from Nadif Jama, the governor for Garissa county.
"The fallacy and satanic mindset of Al-Shabaab is that in Somalia, they kill Muslims and Somalis," Jama said. "They cross the border here and then say they are killing non-Muslims. That is a tricky way of doing business."
Jama said the militants were "bent on nothing but destruction" and aimed to sow division between Muslims and non-Muslims.
"But that is something we need to fight," Jama said.
Kenyan police have arrested five suspects in connection with Thursday's attack at the school, not far from Kenya's border with Somalia, Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said Friday.
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