Tourists pay bill so relatives can bury blast victims
This petty officialdom was made all the more distressing because the families could not afford to pay until the tourists stepped in.
The dead belonged to the dance troop which was welcoming guests at the Paradise Hotel when the bomb exploded.
The funerals were due to go ahead on Saturday. The graves had been dug in the dancers' home village and the relatives had gathered. But when the families went to pick up the bodies from the hospital mortuary, they were presented with a bill.
They were told the bodies would not be released until the mortuary fees were cleared.
Help came from British holidaymakers staying at a nearby hotel.
After the bombing, guests started raising funds to help the Kenyan victims of the attack. It is this money which was used to release the bodies for burial yesterday.
Relatives are bitter about what has happened.
One man said that Kenyans were suffering more than Israelis the targets of the suicide bombers.
The Israeli military airlifted out their survivors and the dead within hours of the attack. The Kenyan government and opposition politicians have also publicly pledged funds to help those caught up in the bombing.
Meanwhile, Kenyan investigators have not ruled out the possibility that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network carried out the simultaneous terror attacks on an Israeli-owned airliner and the resort hotel, the country's defence minister said yesterday. Israel and the US also suspect al-Qaida involvement despite a claim of responsibility by the previously unknown Army of Palestine.
"Kenya has been attacked by al-Qaida (before) so we cannot rule them out," Internal Security and Defence Minister Julius Sunkuli said, referring to the deadly 1998 attack on the US Embassy in Nairobi.
