A Kenyan court on Thursday sentenced two men to 30 years in prison on terrorism charges for their role in a deadly attack on a luxury hotel in the capital in 2019.

The attack on the DusitD2 hotel and office complex in central Nairobi left 21 people dead, with police rescuing some 700 civilians as events unfolded over the 20-hour siege.

Five gunmen with the Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabaab stormed the complex on the afternoon of January 15, 2019 with one detonating a suicide bomb outside and four others shot dead by police.

Last month, a court found two Kenyan citizens, Hussein Mohamed Abdille Ali, 22, and Mohamed Abdi Ali, 61, guilty of conspiracy to commit and facilitating terrorism for their role in preparing the attack.

Deaths and emotional scars

Sentencing them at a Nairobi courthouse on Thursday, Judge Diana Kavedza said: "The convicts may not have physically wielded the weapons that caused harm to the victims, but their facilitation directly enabled attackers who were heavily armed with guns, grenades, and suicide vests."

"This was not a crime with isolated harm, 21 lives were lost," she added, acknowledging statements from survivors about their ongoing psychological struggles.

"The emotional scars of the attack runs deep," she said.

Al-Shabaab has carried out multiple attacks in Kenya in part because of its decision to send troops into Somalia in 2011 to fight the group.

Other deadly terrorist attacks

An assault on the high-end Westgate mall in Nairobi in 2013 left 67 dead in a siege that stretched out over four days.

Two years later, 148 people died when the terrorist group attacked Garissa University near the border with Somalia.