Three held in Kenya blast investigation

Kenyan police are questioning three members of the same family in connection with the November 28 suicide attack at a coastal hotel that killed 11 Kenyans and three Israeli tourists, an independent television station and newspaper reported Sunday.

Husna Salim told Nation Television that her husband Mohammed Kubwa had been detained by police since Wednesday. Kubwa’s sister, Swalah Mohammed Kubwa, and his father Kubwa Mohammed, have also been detained, the television reported.

The three being detained live in Siyu, a town on Pate Island near the popular tourist destination of Lamu, five kilometres (3 miles) off the Kenyan coast, Nation reported.

Police officials would neither confirm or deny the reports.

Salim said she did not know where the three were being held and had not spoken to them since they were detained.

The Sunday Nation newspaper said Mohammed Kubwa was a councillor in Siyu, while Swalah Kubwa is a trainee teacher. It did not say what the Kubwa Mohammed does.

On the morning of November 28, a vehicle packed with explosives ploughed into the Paradise Hotel, 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa.

Minutes before the bombing, unidentified assailants fired two missiles at an Arkia Airlines Boeing 757, narrowly missing the charter aircraft as it was taking off from Mombasa airport with Israeli tourists returning to Tel Aviv.

President Mwai Kibaki recently ordered that an anti-terrorism unit be set up and has replaced the East African nation’s police chiefs.

Kibaki was elected at December 27 elections that ended the 39-year rule of the Kenya African National Union party and he has promised to reform Kenya’s poorly resourced, notoriously corrupt police force.

Police have questioned a number of people in connection with the case but have made no arrests.

The twin attacks were first claimed by the previously unknown Army of Palestine, but Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida network said that it was responsible a few days later on an Islamic Web site.

Al-Qaida also threatened more strikes against the United States and Israel in a separate statement attributed to its spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith.

Israel blames al-Ittihad al-Islami, a Somali-based group with links to the al Qaida network, for the two attacks, but Kenyan authorities say there is no evidence to prove that.