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The US embassy in Kenya lowered its flags to half mast in Nairobi Thursday as hundreds of ordinary Kenyans gathered at the site where the embassy once stood to mark the fifth anniversary of the 1998 bombing.
Some people were overcome by emotion and cried when they prayed, lit candles and laid wreaths on the monument that bears the names of 213 victims, nearly all of them Kenyans, at the memorial garden on the site in downtown Nairobi.
Five years ago, at 10:30 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1998, explosives hidden in a pickup truck wrecked the four-story building of the US embassy in Nairobi while another bomb shattered the US mission in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, almost simultaneously. The deadly attack in Kenya alone killed 231 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded over 5,000 others.
In a statement made at the newly-built US embassy situated in the northern suburbs of the Kenyan capital, newly arrived US ambassador to Kenya Mark Bellamy said, "Wreaths placed at the embassy memorial will honor all those who died or were scarred by the attack five years ago."
"The embassy and US government are deeply honored by the sacrifices made by all Nairobi embassy employees who survived the bombing," he added.
Local media quoted an analyst at the London International Institute for Strategic Studies, Jonathan Stevenson, as saying that the bombings marked the emergence of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda as a global terrorist network.
"The Nairobi embassy bombings were the first wake-up calls that there was an anti-American group ready to attack at vulnerable points throughout the world," said the analyst.
During the five years since the Nairobi attack, the US government has allegedly extended humanitarian assistance totaling more than US$42 million to Kenyan victims of the bombing and their families, including medical care, counseling, school fees, rehabilitation therapy, vocational training, recovery assistance to businesses as well as the reconstruction of buildings.
During the period, however, Kenya, known as the most stable country in east Africa, has been a lasting victim of terrorism. It suffered at least one more major terrorist attack and many terrorist threats aiming at foreigners including Americans, British citizens and Israelis.
At the end of November 2002, three terrorists bombed the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in the coastal city of Mombasa, killing 17 people, including three Israeli tourists and three suicide bombers.
Meanwhile, two missiles were launched at an Israeli airliner with about 200 passengers on board but narrowly missed the target.
Police in Mombasa raided two suspected al-Qaeda agents last Friday, but one officer was killed when one of the two men arrested detonated a grenade, which also killed himself and led to the flee of the other.
Last year, the US embassy in Kenya has been repeatedly shuttered in response to US State Department warnings of imminent danger from the al-Qaeda related terrorists.
Kenya, which relies heavily on international tourism, has also been stung by US criticism of its security.
Earlier this year, both the United States and Britain warned their citizens against non-essential travel to Kenya because of terrorism fears.
The British government suspended flights to Kenyan airports in May this year following terrorist threats.
US President George W. Bush recently announced a 100-million-dollar initiative to help fight terrorism in the eastern Africa region.
The bulk of the money is expected to go toward improving the capacity of Kenyan security agents to confront acts of terrorism. But the problem concerning Kenyan victims affected by the 1998 Nairobi bombing and relatives of those who died in the incident remains unsettled.
These survivors and relatives want a share of some of Osama bin Laden's hundreds of millions of US dollars frozen in banks in the West.
They filed two cases in the United States seeking compensation, but lost before 3,700 Kenyans filed briefs in the federal court in Washington through US civil rights lawyers.
In October 2001, a New York court sentenced to life imprisonment three of the four men convicted in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. However, securing any of the frozen funds to compensate victims of terrorist attacks linked with bin Laden has proven even more daunting than tracking the assets, said one diplomat here who did not want to be named.
(Xinhua News Agency August 8, 2003)
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