Kenya buries its dead, fears it may become a Beirut

In the shadow of the bombed embassy here, not far from a mound of memorial bouquets, helmeted investigators continued poking through rubble while others pored over evidence in tents nearby.

A British forensic team was on the way to aid the FBI’s 215 agents, lab examiners, evidence technicians, computer specialists, photographers and translators here and Dar es Salaam.

Bombing evidence was expected to arrive at the FBI laboratories in Washington this weekend for tests to confirm what explosives were used and whether the two bombs had the same ingredients.

Police here areworking on new leads they hope will enable them to trace the vehicle used in the bombing a yellow pickup truck or van which local reports say was apparently bought locally shortly before the attack.

Investigators have declined to discuss specifics of the probe.

But employees at one Nairobi car dealership said yesterday that police had called in the firm’s owner for questioning the previous day. What he said was not immediately known.

Nine badly charred bodies still lie in cold storage at morgues, unclaimed more than a week after the deadliest attack on a US embassy. Funeral services for others were being held today across Kenya, where newspapers carried dozens of black-bordered death announcements.

In a videotaped message, US President Bill Clinton extended condolences to the victims’ families, saying “we grieve together.”

“Violent extremists try to use bullets and bombs to derail our united efforts to bring peace to every part of this earth,” he said.

“We are wondering how Nairobi couldhave become a Beirut, a Belfast,” banker Sam Kamau said in a eulogy.

Eight days after the bombings, newspapers in Kenya also reflected a mixture of grief, bewilderment and anger. Several letters to the editor accused the Americans of giving priority to US victims and protecting evidence at the bombed embassy site, at the expense of rescue efforts. All but 12 of the dead were Kenyans.

“Few Kenyans will ever forget the hideous images of charred bodies trapped in buses, mutilated corpses piled up in pick-ups and dazed wounded groping in the streets, their faces washed in blood,” said an editorial in The Kenya Times. “No arrest, trial or conviction will ever compensate for the losses.”

United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced she will leave tomorrow for the two East African capitals to meet with investigators and console the injured.

12 out of 14 suspects freed

DAR ES SALAAM: Tanzanian police said today they released 12 of 14 foreign nationals held in connectionwith a bomb blast at the US embassy in Dar es Salaam last week that killed 10 people. Director of criminal investigations Rajabu Adadi told a news conference the remaining two were not being held as prime suspects in the bombing.