November 30, 2002	Saturday	Ramazan 24, 1423

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MOMBASA (Kenya) Nov 29: Six Pakistanis and three Somalis were among 12 people held for questioning on Friday in Kenya about the anti-Israeli attacks that left 16 people dead near Mombasa, police said.

Police spokesman King’ori Mwangi said the three others under detention were an American, a Spaniard and a Kenyan, but he did not say whether they were suspects in the attacks.

In Washington, a US State Department official said an American woman and her Spanish husband were “innocent backpackers and were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and would be freed shortly.

The official said the couple, who were not identified, were on vacation in Kenya at the time of Thursday’s attacks and were among 12 people picked up by authorities in a sweep of Mombasa.

The husband holds an American “green card” which entitles him to residency and employment in the United States, the US official said.

Sixteen people in all, three of them Israelis, were killed when attackers rammed a suicide car bomb into the Paradise Mombasa hotel on Thursday morning, according to the Kenyan authorities.

The three attackers were believed to be among the dead.

At the same time an Israeli passenger jet leaving Mombasa airport was almost shot down by two missiles.

Mwangi said meanwhile that nine of those detained were picked up from two boats that were intercepted at sea apparently trying to leave Mombasa following the attacks.

Kenyan investigators, joined by Israeli and US colleagues, were on Friday pursuing leads into the attacks amid growing suspicion worldwide they may have been carried out by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

In Berlin, German Interior Minister Otto Schily blamed Al Qaeda for the attacks and warned that any panic reaction could help Osama split the international community.

Kenya on Thursday declined to rule out the possibility that the attacks could have been carried out by Al Qaeda, which was blamed for blowing up the US embassy in Nairobi four years ago.

But no clear indication as to who was behind the attacks had been made public.

Police commissioner Philemon Abong’o said investigators had found the licence plates of the explosives-laden vehicle which blew up when it hit the hotel in the whitesand resort of Kikambala, just as a group of 140 Israeli tourists were checking in.

The plates were traced to a Kenyan company, which may have been the previous owner, although it was possible they might be fakes, he said.

It was still not clear if any of the three people seen in the vehicle before it blew up had actually managed to escape at the last minute, he added.

He said witnesses had meanwhile reported that the people who fired on the plane had fled in a “white Pajero”, a Japanese-made all-terrain vehicle.

Kenyan police said on Thursday they had recovered a missile launcher and the casings of exploded missiles used by attackers who tried to shoot down the Israeli plane flying from Mombasa to Tel Aviv.

Two missiles were fired at a charter plane from Israel’s Arkia airlines with 261 passengers on board as it was taking off from the airport. Both narrowly missed their target.

In Sydney, officials said the Australian government had warned of a terrorist threat in Mombasa more than two weeks before the bomb attack.

Canberra warned on Friday of a possible new threat in a new travel advisory on Kenya. It urged Australians to avoid non-essential travel there and to exercise extreme caution if they did have to visit.

WRECKAGE: Israeli and US experts pored over the wreckage of the Paradise and the suicide bombers’ car.

“Terrorism is dangerous, not only to Europe and the United States, but also to Africa, and we must fight it,” Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi said as he inspected the ruins.

Mombasa is a mostly Muslim city with links to the Arab world. Prominent Islamist Abubakar Awadh, an official of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, said on Friday: “If this was done to Israelis alone, it would be a worthy cause.” He said he was speaking in a personal capacity.

Israeli and Kenyan officials have been quick to blame Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. But the White House said it was too soon to blame the group it accuses of mounting the Sept 11 attacks and the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people died, most of them Africans.

The previously unheard-of “Army of Palestine” claimed responsibility in a faxed statement. There was no confirmation.—Agencies