Kenya Detains 12 in Attacks

MOMBASA, Kenya —  As Israelis and Kenyans prepared to bury their dead from a suicide truck bomb that killed at least 15 people and leveled a beachfront resort near here, investigators Friday detained 12 people for interrogation and searched for clues in the still smoldering ruins.

Among those detained was an American woman and her husband. They were expected to be released soon.

Four Israeli air force Hercules cargo planes evacuated about 250 tourists -- in Kenya for a weeklong getaway at the Paradise hotel, which catered to Israeli tourists -- and took home the bodies of three Israelis killed in the blast.The attack Thursday on the hotel in the tiny rural village of Msumarini, about 35 miles north of this port city, also claimed the lives of at least nine Kenyans who worked at the hotel and the three suicide bombers who drove a Mitsubishi sport utility vehicle packed with explosives into the crowded reception area of the resort.

Authorities said the bombing was meant to coincide with a missile attack minutes earlier on an Israeli-chartered Boeing 757 as it took off from the Mombasa airport with 261 passengers and 10 crew members bound for Tel Aviv. The plane was apparently hit by fragments from one of two heat-seeking missiles fired from a canyon next to the airfield. Despite some minor damage, the Arkia Charter Co. airliner landed safely in Israel.

Among the 18 injured Israelis returning home Friday on the evacuation flight were Ora Anter, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Ariel, whose two sons, Noy, 12, and Dvir, 14, were killed by the massive truck bomb. Anter remained unconscious after suffering a serious abdominal injury, apparently when she attempted to shield her 8-year-old daughter, Adva, from the blast. Adva survived with minor injuries.

Ambulances rushed Anter and other victims from the cargo planes to four Tel Aviv hospitals.

Israeli television broadcast a videotape of Noy’s 12th birthday celebration from last weekend. The family’s trip to Kenya was a special Hanukkah vacation and the children’s first voyage abroad.

Relatives wept outside the airport terminal in Tel Aviv as the brothers’ coffins were unloaded. The third slain Israeli, whose body was also returned Friday, was identified as Albert Dehaville, 60, a tour guide.

As Kenyans and Israelis mourned, authorities here were rounding up people for questioning. Kenyan Police Commissioner Philemon Abongo refused to give details of those being detained.

“We believe some of them have information that could be useful,” he said.

Two of those being questioned attacks were guests at the Le Soleil Beach Club, just down the road from the Paradise hotel. An American woman who checked in under the name Alicia Kalhammer and her husband were arrested as they attempted to check out, said Ben Wafula, Le Soleil’s manager.

Kalhammer told hotel employees she was from Florida, according to Wafula. She and her husband, described by U.S. Embassy officials in Nairobi as a Spanish national with U.S. resident status, were headed for Lamu, a nearby island famous for its Swahili culture and architecture. Indications were that the couple would be released.

Wafula said police had instructed hotel owners in the area to report all guests departing in the hours immediately after the blast. “They probably just picked the wrong time to check out,” he said of the couple.

Many observers here do not expect a major breakthrough in the investigation soon. Some say Kenyan authorities have a history of rounding up alleged terrorism suspects but never charging them.

Kenyan authorities have all but handed the bomb scene investigation over to the numerous Israeli experts who flew in early Friday morning.

“We have loads of experience with these kinds of things,” said Gilad Millo, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, explaining the presence of about 150 Israel Defense Forces forensics and bomb experts in Mombasa. In Msumarini, Israeli investigators sealed off the front of the Paradise hotel with crime scene tape.

U.S. intelligence agencies, meanwhile, continued Friday to focus on Al Qaeda as the terrorist group most likely behind the attacks. But officials cautioned that it was too early to know for sure.

“It has a lot of hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation,” one U.S. intelligence official said, noting that the group led by Osama bin Laden has a record of orchestrating near-simultaneous attacks on targets, such as in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed more than 200 people -- most of them Kenyans -- and injured more than 5,000.

The intelligence official said counter-terrorism experts are also exploring whether Thursday’s attacks might have been carried out by an Al Qaeda affiliate in the Horn of Africa.

One group that has caught the CIA’s attention is known as Al Ittihad al Islami, described as Somalia’s most active radical Islamic group. Since 1996, it has carried out regional attacks, including bombings and an assassination attempt on Ethiopia’s transportation minister.

The increasingly anti-Western group has received money from Al Qaeda, and some of its members trained at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence official said.

“We’re not ruling out Hezbollah or other Palestinian extremist groups,” the official said. “But we don’t view that as likely as it being an Al Qaeda operation.”

Thursday’s attacks brought unwanted attention to Muslims in Mombasa. The city has become home to a diverse population of immigrants, including Somalis, Yemenis and Persian Gulf Arabs.

For several months, hundreds of U.S. and German military personnel have been using Mombasa bases to patrol the coasts of Kenya and Somalia in search of people with links to Bin Laden. The Al Qaeda leader’s former chief military commander, Mohammed Atef, who is believed by U.S. officials to have played a key role in the 1998 embassy bombings, once operated a thriving fishing business near here. Atef was killed in the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan.

Another top Al Qaeda member, Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, who with three others was convicted last year in the embassy attacks, also operated a furniture business near Mombasa. Muslim leaders here say Thursday’s attacks have brought unwanted attention to them, and they fear investigators may feel emboldened to harass Muslims.

Sheik Mohammed Dor, general secretary of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya, regarded here as a mainstream Muslim group, warned Israeli investigators that if they violate Kenyans’ rights, “we will fight back.”

In Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that “our long arm will reach those who spilled Israeli blood” in Africa. He has ordered Israel’s Mossad spy agency to take charge of retaliation.

His statement echoed Israel’s pursuit of terrorists who have killed its citizens in the past. After a Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, Mossad agents tracked down and killed every alleged participant except one, even when it meant killing bystanders in the process.

Mossad has suffered a series of embarrassing failures in recent years, including a botched attempt in 1998 to assassinate a leader of the radical Islamic group Hamas in Jordan.

However, analysts say Israel’s pursuit of Al Qaeda members, if the shadowy network proves to be responsible for the Kenya attacks, would be far more complicated than retaliation against Palestinian factions.

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Maharaj reported from Mombasa and Wilkinson from Jerusalem. Times staff writer Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this report.