KENYA/PAKISTAN: FBI AGENTS IN NAIROBI RAID A HOTEL WHERE THE BOMB THAT TARGETED U.S. EMBASSY WAS MADE/AMERICANS LEAVE KARACHI BECAUSE OF SECURITY FEARS

Record ID: 358471

  • Title: KENYA/PAKISTAN: FBI AGENTS IN NAIROBI RAID A HOTEL WHERE THE BOMB THAT TARGETED U.S. EMBASSY WAS MADE/AMERICANS LEAVE KARACHI BECAUSE OF SECURITY FEARS
  • Date: 19th August 1998
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (AUGUST 18, 1998) (RTV) 1. LV/SLV/SV OF FBI INVESTIGATORS AT BOMBED SITE (4 SHOTS) 0.22 2. SLV/SV EXTERIOR OF HILLTOP LODGE HOTEL WHERE BOMBS SUSPECTED TO HAVE BEEN MADE (2 SHOTS) 0.33 3. CU MAN HOLDING NEWSPAPER, HEADLINE READING FBI SWOOPS ON BOMBERS' HOTEL 0.43 4. SV/CU INTERIOR OF HOTEL IN ROOM 102, WHERE BOMBS SUSPECTED
  • Embargoed: 3rd September 1998 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NAIROBI, KENYA/ KARACHI, PAKISTAN
  • City:
  • Country: AFRICA Pakistan ASIA Kenya
  • Reuters ID: LVAC830N6ZX9RAC7CZ4QGTAXFYM6
  • Story Text: FBI agents in Nairobi have raided a hotel where the bomb that targeted the United States (U.S.) embassy on August 7 was made.

    The agents confiscated evidence and arrested the hotel's manager.

    In Pakistan, more than 200 Americans have left the capital Karachi because of security fears.

    The Kenyan newspaper The Daily Nation on Tuesday (August 18), citing unnamed sources, said the bomb, made from 800 kg (1760 lb) of high explosive TNT, was assembled in rooms 102 and 107 of the Hilltop Lodge Hotel.

    FBI and Kenyan police have not yet commented on the report.

    "The two rooms were inspected for forensic evidence but it appeared that the bombers had swept clean any particles of the material used to make the bomb," the paper quoted an unidentified source as saying.

    It said that the raid had been carried out by 15 FBI agents and six Nairobi detectives, who sealed off the hotel and conducted a two-and-a-half hour search of all of the rooms.

    At the hotel, employee Joseph Kanyari said the hotel manager James Ng'anga had been arrested and the book with names of guests had been recorded.He added that there had been Arabic looking people at teh hotel.

    The Daily Nation said that Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, who was deported to Kenya from Pakistan in connection with the August 7 bomb that killed 247 people and wounded over 5,000, had confessed to masterminding the attack.

    The paper said Odeh, a Palestinian, had booked into the hotel on August 4, to join three accomplices who had checked in the day before.

    It said that on August 7, they completed the bomb in an enclosed pick-up truck which they then drove across the city to the embassy.

    The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Odeh had given details to Pakistani officials of a global paramilitary network aimed at U.S.interests abroad and orchestrated by wealthy Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

    The New York Times quoted unnamed Pakistani officials in Islamabad as saying two more suspects in the Nairobi bombing had been arrested while trying to cross into neighbouring Afghanistan.

    In Karachi, more than 200 Americans left the Pakistani capital in a chartered aircraft from a Pakistan Air Force base near Islamabad after orders from Washington that nonessential embassy staff should leave the country.

    The flight was expected to arrive in Washington in the early hours of Wednesday (August 19) after a refuelling stop in Brussels.

    Former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto lamented the departure of the U.S.personnel, saying it would cause set backs to the stockmarket and currency.

    An embassy spokesman stressed that the move was not specific to Pakistan, but was part of a worldwide precautionary withdrawal from centres where staff were vulnerable in the wake of the East African bombings.

    The United States had cited a "very serious threat" to U.S.facilities and citizens for its move, which followed Pakistan's statement on Sunday (August 16), that it had arrested a suspect in the bombings and sent him to Nairobi.

    Pakistan identified the suspect as Mohammad Sadik Howaida, 32, and described him as an "Arab national" without specifying his country of origin.


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