Kenya attack

The sun hadn't risen at Garissa University College. Most students slept in their beds. A few had woken up to head to early morning Christian prayers.

Then the terror began.

It started with an explosion and gunshots around 5:30 a.m. Thursday (10:30 p.m. ET Wednesday) at the Kenyan school's front gates. The attackers continued to fire as they stalked through campus, with the Red Cross saying they stopped at a girls' dormitory.

At one point, they burst into a room where Christians had gathered and took hostages, said lecturer Joel Ayora. A student in the room told Alex Kubasu, a reporter with CNN affiliate Citizen TV, that the terrorists sprayed bullets indiscriminately, striking his thigh. "Then they proceeded to the hostels," Ayora told CNN, referring to the university dorm, "shooting anybody they came across -- except their fellows, the Muslims." According to AFP, the gunmen separated the students by religion and allowed Muslims to leave. This would be consistent with the past practices of Al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based terror group that's claimed responsibility for the attack. That's what Al-Shabaab did in a December raid on a quarry in the Kenyan village of Kormey, near the Somali border, that ended with at least 36 killed.

Whatever their religion, hundreds of students managed to escape, said Dennis Okari, a reporter with CNN affiliate NTV.

Some ran. Some crawled. All feared for their lives