/ 22 March 2003

Britain warns of African terror threat

Britain’s Foreign Office warned on Friday that there was an increased terrorist threat to travellers in seven East African nations after the launch of the US-led war on Iraq.

The Foreign Office said that the threat of terrorism in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda was ”especially high” during the military campaign.

It warned tourists in Kenya in particular to take ”all sensible precautions and be extremely vigiliant especially in public places”.

A Foreign Office representative said: ”It reflects the fact that we are continuing to receive information about potential terrorist threats.”

On November 28 last year, an attack in the coastal resort city of Mombasa killed 12 Kenyans and three Israelis, and there was a failed attempt to bring down an airliner flying to Israel with a rocket launcher.

In 1998, a bombing claimed by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network of the US embassy in the Kenyan capital Nairobi killed 213 people, while an attack in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam killed 11. – Sapa-AFP