The Kenyan sun had not long risen on the first day of the Israeli tourists’ holiday when they arrived at the hotel. Children and their parents mixed with couples on Hanukkah vacation at the Paradise Hotel’s reception.
Anticipation must have filled the air: in front of the tourists lay miles of white beaches, the Indian Ocean and glorious weather — the troubles of home left a thousand miles behind.
At the check-in a troupe of traditional dancers greeted them to relieve the tedium of the queues. The tourists had endured a long, early-morning flight, but the holiday of a lifetime awaited them. Within five minutes or so, by 8.30am, most of the tourists had picked up their keys and were already in their rooms. They were the lucky ones.
Outside a four-wheel drive vehicle was approaching the hotel’s security gate. It was 8.35am and the guards motioned for the car to stop. It didn’t.
Instead the all-terrain vehicle careered straight through the barrier. ”I saw it forcing its way into the gate,” said a barman at the hotel across the road from the Paradise. ”It had three people of Arabic origin and after it got to the reception I heard an explosion.”
The sound of the explosion was, thankfully, all that most of the tourists witnessed of the terrible scene being played out in reception.
After breaking through the security barrier, the car sped down the hotel’s driveway, stopping as close to the reception as it could. Immediately, one man jumped out. In the middle of the hotel reception he blew himself up. Inside the car, his two colleagues followed suit: three suicide bombers had detonated explosives in the Paradise. The devastation was instant.
Almost as soon as the bombs exploded, the front of the hotel collapsed. In the reception lay the dead and the injured.
”People were cut up in the legs, arms, all over their bodies. Everything was burned up,” one witness told Israeli radio. And then there was also the overwhelming sound of fear.
”I saw people covered with blood, including children. Everyone seemed to be screaming,” Kelly Hartog, a journalist with the Jerusalem Post, told the newspaper’s website. ”People were screaming for water, but there was no water and the tap water was undrinkable … I tried to occupy myself tending to the children. ‘I want to go home,’ they said. ‘Where are my parents?”’
Everyone tried to help. Nimrod Grissarov, an Israeli doctor on holiday with a group of children celebrating a bar mitzvah, attended the walking wounded. ”I can tell you personally that I treated three victims who I would classify as moderately wounded,” he told Israeli Army Radio. ”They had head injuries, a kidney injury.”
For many of those standing in the hotel reception, particularly the Kenyan dancers, the injuries were far more serious. The Kenyan journalist Victor Mwasi said he saw seven bodies, four burned beyond recognition.
The fortunate ones who were in their rooms heard the explosion first. ”I heard ‘boom boom’ and then all the windows blew out. I heard many people crying,” one told Kenyan television.
”We were lucky because we were only in the corner of the room when the glass windows smashed,” a female Israeli tourist said.
”There was a very big bomb near the lobby and the whole of the roof went on fire,” said another witness. ”I think most of the people just heard the sound, but some of the people got hurt and some of the dancers who were welcoming us got hurt.”
As soon as they knew what was happening, those tourists who could headed for the safety of the beach. The wounded gathered on the beach or in the grounds, as the charred remains of the hotel smouldered. ”The fire started very quickly,” a witness said. ”We got up and went to the sea.”
Ambulances and doctors arrived; some people were taken to a local hospital, the more serious casualties to Mombasa.
The hotel staff who were uninjured did what they could. Said Mashauri, the hotel manager, had been on the beach when the bombs exploded, and took seven seriously wounded people to hospital, two of whom were taken straight into intensive care.
The sound of police sirens completed the scene: the local police helped the injured while Kenyan paramilitary forces scanned the area for evidence.
Despite the devastation all around, the tourists sat together on the ground and counted their blessings, they said — they knew they were very lucky to be alive.
Thursday morning was the busiest day of the week at the Israeli-owned hotel: the bombers obviously knew this was when new arrivals checked in. But though the attack appears to have been carefully planned, a matter of minutes saved the tourists from death and injury on a far greater scale.
”Had it been five minutes earlier when everyone was in the hotel lobby it could have been much, much worse,” one witness told BBC News 24. ”Many of those who were wounded were wounded by falling glass when the windows shattered and the doors blew off.”
Within hours of the blast, most of the tourists were taken to nearby hotels. Few of them had any stomach for a holiday. ”I think we all just want to go home,” Hartog said.
For the tourist workers left behind, though, it will not be so easy to leave yesterday’s devastation. The coastal region of Kenya is a Muslim stronghold, but the Israeli director of the hotel believed it was a place where Muslims and Jews could live side by side peacefully. ”We have good relations with this community, we have been here for years,” Yehuda Salami said. ”We have no problems.”
Until yesterday that is. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001