Hotel Blast Kills 11, Israeli Plane Escapes Missiles

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, November 28, 2002

Hotel Blast Kills 11, Israeli Plane Escapes Missiles

Kenyan police confirmed 11 people were killed when a suicide car bomb explosion ripped through a hotel near the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa Thursday. "A total 11 people are confirmed dead," police spokesman Kimgori Mwangi said, adding that the dead included six Kenyans and some Israelis.

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Eight people were killed on Thursday in a car bomb attack on a hotel frequented by Israeli tourists in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, residents said.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said two missiles were fired at an Israeli Arkia airliner carrying 261 passengers as it left Mombasa, but missed.

There was no claim of responsibility for the two attacks, reported within minutes of each other. Most of the tourists at the hotel were believed to be Israelis. Some Kenyans were also reported to have been hurt.

The United States blamed Islamic militant Osama bin Laden for two 1998 truck bomb attacks on US embassies in the Kenyan capital Nairobi and the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam in which 224 people were killed and thousands injured.

The Mombasa bomb, in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, blasted the Paradise Hotel, popular with foreign tourists, including Israelis, in Mombasa.

"There's smoke and there's fire," a Mombasa resident said from outside the hotel as ambulances sped away.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said two missiles were fired at the airliner but missed. Israel security sources said all the passengers aboard the Arkia plane were safe and it was continuing to Israel.

It was due to land in Israel around 12 40 p.m. (1040 GMT).

A woman who gave her name as Neima told Israeli radio by phone that she had just arrived at the hotel with a group of tourists from Israel when the hotel lobby was shaken by the blast.

"People were cut up in the legs, arms, all over their bodies. Everything was burned up," she said.

US prosecutors indicted bin Laden in connection with the 1998 embassy bombings. It held he and his al Qaeda group responsible also for the September 11 attacks on the United States last year.

Al-Qaeda held responsible for double attack

Initial evidence suggests that Thursday's double terrorist attack on Israeli targets in Kenya was an Al-Qaeda operation, Israeli TV reported.

Kenyan Ambassador John Malan Sawe also told Israel Army Radio that "no doubt that the Al-Qaeda organization was behind the attacks."

At least 11 people were killed and more than a dozen wounded in a suicide car bombing attack on the Paradise hotel in Kenya's Indian Ocean port city Mombasa.

The toll includes three Israelis and three suicide bombers.

Nearly parallel to the kamikaze blast on the ground, an Israeli airliner narrowly escaped an attack by two missiles shortly after taking off from an airport in Mombasa. No one was injured on board.

The terrorist Al-Qaeda network is held responsible for last year's Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, as well as two truck bomb explosions simultaneously targeting US embassies in the Kenyan capital Nairobi and the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam in 1998.

The twin blasts killed 224 people and injured thousands of others.

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