Mossad team lead terror investigation

A Mossad-led team of Israeli experts was carrying out sweeping searches in Mombasa today, after the two terrorist attacks on their countrymen.

Security officials were questioning 12 foreigners and trying to trace the vehicle used in a missile attack on an Israeli charter jet.

Kenyan and Israeli authorities sealed off the blackened shell of the Paradise Hotel hit by a suicide car bomb attack that killed 10 Kenyans, three Israelis and the three bombers on Thursday.

Israeli officials collected debris – including launchers and two missile casings – from the site where two missiles were launched about five minutes before the hotel blast, 15 miles north of Mombasa.

Israeli authorities appeared to be doing most of the evidence gathering, while Kenyan police assisted them. US security officials were also involved in the investigation.

“I’m happy with the way the investigation is going,” internal security and defence minister Julius Sunkuli told The Associated Press. “We are really trying to work hard to get more clues about the other car because we don’t think it has left Kenya.”

Police have found the registration plate for the vehicle used in the suicide attack, but it is not clear who owned the vehicle. There has been no progress tracing the vehicle used in the missile attack.

The two missiles streaked past a Boeing 757 Israeli charter aircraft owned by Arkia Airlines as it left the Mombasa airport bound for Tel Aviv.

Officials close to the investigation said it was likely that the rockets were Russian-made Strelas, a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile.

Sunkuli said the missile launchers – which had been painted blue – were “most likely” Russian, but could be German or American.

Kenyan security said it appeared the missiles were fired by someone standing in a grassy gulch across a two-lane highway from the airfield. A white four-wheel drive vehicle had been parked at the spot about a mile from the airfield, police said.

The missiles narrowly missed being hit by the plane, carrying 271 passengers and crew members.

Police have detained 12 people for questioning, including an American woman, a Spanish man with resident status for the United States, six Pakistani men and four men from neighbouring Somalia, Sunkuli told reporters.

Deputy police commissioner William Langat contradicted earlier police statements by saying the Pakistanis and Somalis were detained immediately after the Thursday morning attacks. Police had said they were picked up yesterday.

The Somalis and Pakistanis arrived at Mombasa port in a leaking boat on Monday, Langat said. As far as police know, they did not leave the a dhow, a traditional wooden ship with a triangular sail, he said.

It was not clear where the men came from.

Sunkuli said he did not think the American woman, who used a Florida address when she checked into a hotel near the Paradise Hotel, and the Spaniard, believed to be her husband, were involved in the attacks.

“When they’re involvement is totally ruled out the police will release them,” he said.

Police had earlier said the Pakistanis and Somalis had suspicious documents, but Sunkuli said not all of them were travelling on false passports.

“These people are either connected directly or remotely. Some may not be connected at all,” he told reporters.

The previously unknown Army of Palestine has claimed responsibility for the attacks. But Palestinian officials denied that any Palestinian group was involved, and Kenyan and Israeli officials have said they suspect Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network was behind the attacks.

In Washington, initial suspicion centred on two groups: al-Qaida and al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a Somali Islamic group suspected of having links to bin Laden’s network, a US official said. It is also possible the two groups were working together, the official said.

A wide array of weapons are available in Somalia, which has frequently been cited by the United States as a possible terrorist haven.

Al-Qaida has been blamed for the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 231 people and wounded more than 5,000.

“Kenya has been attacked by al-Qaida (before) so we cannot rule them out,” Sunkuli said. “Over the last six months Kenyan investigators have been following certain leads, (but) not particularly this one.”

The Israeli army has sent a team of 150 doctors, psychologists, and soldiers to Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast – a popular tourist destination.

Two of the Israelis killed were teenage brothers. Doctors said one was burned so badly he was identifiable only by his braces. All that remained of the other brother was part of an arm.

The mother of the dead boys was in a serious condition and an older sister was in moderate condition, Israeli officials said.