/ 15 March 2004

Terror warnings put 14 000 out of work in Kenya

Terror warnings from the United States and other countries in the past ten months have left nearly 14 000 Kenyan hotel workers unemployed, the Nairobi daily East African Standard reported on Monday.

In most hotels on the coast and in national parks, the occupation rate has dropped 65%, the reported quoted the Kenyan Hotel Association as saying.

As many as 35 hotels have been forced to close, said Kenyan tourist industry officials, who have appealed to the United States to lift its latest warning.

Kenya was twice the site of attacks by the al-Qaeda terror network. In 1998, an attack on the US embassy in Nairobi left more than 200 dead. In 2002, suicide bombers killed 15 in an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa.

Kenya shares a border with the unstable country of Somalia. – Sapa-DPA