Another Paradise Hotel Razed to Ground in Kenyan Port City

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Another Paradise Hotel Razed to Ground in Kenyan Port City

Four tourist beach hotels in the Kenyan port city Mombasa were razed on Monday night in a mysterious fire that sent over 1,000 guests mostly from Europe fleeing for their dear lives.

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Four tourist beach hotels in the Kenyan port city Mombasa were razed on Monday night in a mysterious fire that sent over 1,000 guests mostly from Europe fleeing for their dear lives.

The hotels, Paradise, Palm, Coral and Shanzu, all managed by African Safari Club with a total capacity of 630 rooms, were said to have been 75 percent occupied when they caught fire.

At the beginning of the incident, people were shocked particularly as they believed that the Paradise hotel was exactly the same one which was exploded last November by suicide terrorists who killed 17 people including three Israeli tourists and themselves.

It became clear that the four-star Paradise, along with the other three, are run by a German company and most of the visitors made their bookings in Europe rather than Israel.

The fire started at around 7:30 p.m. (0430 GMT) as the guests were settling down for their dinner and spread rapidly fanned by strong winds from the Indian Ocean, leaving a trail of damage estimated at hundreds of millions of Kenyan shillings.

Visibly shaken guests, dashed back to their rooms and picked up a few of their belongings that they could carry and fled from the raging inferno.

A group of heavily armed German soldiers, who were stationed in Mombasa as part of the multinational force against terrorism, rushed from a nearby camp to the scene and helped to evacuate the tourists to various hotels along the beach about 25 km from the center of Mombasa town.

Many of the tourists, mostly from Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland, fled without shoes and pulled along suitcases some with contents spilling.

But as the hotels were still counting their loses, a fresh group of 233 tourists arrived only to be met by smoldering ruins of what would have been their vocation homes.

A worker at the Shanzu Beach Hotel who asked not to be named said that the fire started from among executive suites on the upper floor on the hotel.

"We were preparing to serve guests their dinner when the alarm was sounded. Many of them fled back to their rooms to salvage their property," the worker said.

Poor equipped fire engines from the Mombasa Fire Brigade, the Kenya Navy and the Kenya Ports Authority battled for the fire for almost two hours but they were unable to save the hotels.

The roofs of Kenyan hotels are generally made of dried palm leaves, a material easy to burn.

No injuries have been reported among the guests and the staff who have now been told to go home and wait for further communication.

It is not immediately clear what caused the fire, although some hotel managers have suspected that the fire seemed to be arson.

Kenyan police spokesman Kingori Mwangi on Tuesday told Xinhua in Nairobi by telephone that the fire had no link to terrorism.

However, there have been reports that some of the hotels were having a running labor dispute with the workers' salary arrears for months.

The Shanzu Beach Hotel chain like many others in the region have been experiencing financial constraints caused by low bookings over concerns of international terrorism.

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