Africa Marks 10th Anniversary of al-Qa'eda Embassy Attacks
Raila Odinga was speaking at a memorial service in central Nairobi commemorating those who died in coordinated al-Qa'eda bombings exactly ten years ago.
The blasts, against the US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania's main city, Dar es Salaam, were the first blamed by Washington on the then largely unknown organisation headed by Osama bin Laden.
"The scale of this atrocity shocked our nation to the core," Mr Odinga said after laying a wreath at the site of Nairobi bombing.
"We must leave no stone unturned in fighting the scourge of terrorism.
But at the same time, unless we provide just solutions to political crises such as those in the Middle East, new extremists will continue to be created." More than 200 people died in the two attacks, mid-morning on August 7, 1998, most of them Africans. Another 5,000 were injured.
Four years later, another East African al-Qaeda cell suicide-bombed a hotel on the Kenyan coast and tried to shoot down a jet carrying Israeli holidaymakers.
Kenyan police said last weekend that the alleged mastermind of that plot, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, escaped from a hideout in the coastal city of Malindi just minutes before officers arrived to arrest him late on Saturday.
An American, a Jordanian, a Saudi Arabian and a Tanzanian were convicted in the United States for the 1998 bombings and are currently serving life sentences...
Read entire article at Telegraph
The blasts, against the US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania's main city, Dar es Salaam, were the first blamed by Washington on the then largely unknown organisation headed by Osama bin Laden.
"The scale of this atrocity shocked our nation to the core," Mr Odinga said after laying a wreath at the site of Nairobi bombing.
"We must leave no stone unturned in fighting the scourge of terrorism.
But at the same time, unless we provide just solutions to political crises such as those in the Middle East, new extremists will continue to be created." More than 200 people died in the two attacks, mid-morning on August 7, 1998, most of them Africans. Another 5,000 were injured.
Four years later, another East African al-Qaeda cell suicide-bombed a hotel on the Kenyan coast and tried to shoot down a jet carrying Israeli holidaymakers.
Kenyan police said last weekend that the alleged mastermind of that plot, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, escaped from a hideout in the coastal city of Malindi just minutes before officers arrived to arrest him late on Saturday.
An American, a Jordanian, a Saudi Arabian and a Tanzanian were convicted in the United States for the 1998 bombings and are currently serving life sentences...