Kenyan police were last night questioning 12 people — all foreigners — as an international investigation was stepped up to identify the perpetrators of the first attack on Israeli targets attributed to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
In Mombasa, teams of Israeli and US security officials joined the hunt for those responsible for the attack on the Paradise hotel, where 15 people were killed, including three suicide bombers, on Thursday.
Three Israelis were among the dead — two brothers, aged 13 and 15, and a 61-year-old man. The other victims were Kenyans, including a group of dancers who had been welcoming tourists in the hotel lobby when the bomb went off.
Kenyan police said they were holding six Pakistanis, four Somalis, a Spaniard and an American woman for questioning about the attacks. The Pakistanis and Somalis were arrested shortly before the attacks for entering Kenya illegally, the police said.
Two of the 12 detained had US passports and gave an address in Florida, said Ben Wafula, the manager of Mombasa’s Le Soleil Beach Club, where they were staying when police picked them up. A police source identified the US woman as Alicia Kalhammer.
Peter Claussen, a US embassy representative, confirmed that the woman was an American citizen. He said the man, believed to be her husband, was a Spanish national with US residency status. Police detained Kalhammer and the man as they were checking out of the hotel one and a half hours after the suicide car bomb attack on the Israeli-owned Paradise hotel, Wafula said.
The man and Kalhammer were the only ones who attempted to leave the hotel after the attack, Wafula said. A search of records in the US showed an Alicia Kalhammer living in a flat on South Ocean Drive in Hollywood, Florida.
There were reports last night that the couple were likely to be released.
A security guard at the Paradise hotel, Justin Mundu, yesterday described how a Mitsubishi Pajero passed the hotel gates twice. ”On the third trip it came and swerved into the hotel,” he said.
Moments before the attack on the hotel, two missiles narrowly missed an Israeli airliner taking off at the nearby airport with 261 people on board. Police said the shoulder-held missiles were fired from a white Pajero. ”The search for the white Pajero and three occupants of Arab origin is on,” said the Kenyan police commissioner, Philemon Abong’o. The hotel attackers were also de scribed as of Arab appearance.
Israeli experts said secret on-board defences might have diverted the missiles. The two heat-seeking missiles narrowly missed the Arkia passenger airliner, raising speculation it had used decoy flares.”
Israel has been working on programmes to protect civil aviation from terrorist missile attacks since the 1970s,” Yigal Eyal, a Hebrew University lecturer on insurgency, told Reuters.
During an inspection of the hotel ruins, the Kenyan president, Daniel arap Moi, said: ”Terrorism is dangerous, not only to Europe and the United States, but also to Africa, and we must fight it.”
Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds, said he was ”100% sure” the attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.
Atwan, who has interviewed the Saudi-born militant, said Bin Laden had been criticised by some Arabs for focusing on US targets, ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ”This will enlarge al-Qaeda’s popularity and make it easier for Bin Laden to recruit young hotheads and generate finance,” he added.
Dia Rashwan, an analyst at the al-Ahram centre for political and strategic studies in Cairo, said the Mombasa attacks carried three clear messages. ”One is that al-Qaeda is still there after the Afghan war. Second, and more important, is a message to the Islamic and Arab world that al-Qaeda is sincere when it says it is against Israel and that it’s not just propaganda. Third, that it is not only alive but strong and can strike again in Kenya,” he said.
Abubakar Awadh, of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, said: ”If this was done to Israelis alone, it would be a worthy cause.” He said he was speaking in a personal capacity. – Guardian Unlimited (c)Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001