US reels as 81 die, 1,200 hurt in massive embassy bombings

A STEELY-FACED President Clinton vowed to pursue those responsible for powerful explosions that ripped through two US embassies in East Africa early yesterday morning. Speaking hours after two car bombs transformed the centre of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and a suburb of the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, into devastated war-zones, Mr Clinton said:

"These acts of terrorist violence are abhorrent, they are inhuman. We will use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice, no matter what or how long it takes."

Security was stepped up at US embassies around the world, and Mr Clinton ordered flags on US buildings to be flown at half-mast.

Responsibility for the explosions was claimed late yesterday evening by a hitherto unknown group, calling itself the Liberation Army of the Islamic Sanctuaries', which called the international Arabic daily newspaper, Al-Hayat, in Cairo. The paper quoted the caller as saying that "elements of the organisation carried out the two operations simultaneously". The paper has been a favoured channel of communication for Middle East terrorist groups in the past.

More than 80 people were killed in the two blasts, including at least eight Americans, and more than 1,200 injured. The majority of casualties occurred in Nairobi, where the embassy occupies a busy street corner site. The US rescue, however, which swung into operation within minutes, soon came in for criticism from Kenyans for favouring American casualties.

Kenyan rescue workers, overwhelmed by the number of dead and injured, accused US embassy personnel of reluctance to help. They said the vast majority of those feared dead were Kenyans, inside Ufundi-Co-op House, a college and office building next to the embassy which bore the brunt of the blast. "The US were not interested at all in helping us," one volunteer rescue worker told Reuters news agency. "They were just interested in protecting their damaged embassy. It has given us a very bad picture of the Americans." Others complained that they had been chased away by armed guards when they tried to rescue a body from inside the building.

According to the US State Department, the two explosions occurred at 1040 and 1045 local time: one, at the back of the Nairobi embassy; the other destroying the embassy building in Dar es Salaam. The US ambassador to Kenya, Prudence Bushnell, who had just finished giving a press conference in a neighbouring building, was slightly injured.

Among the eight American casualties confirmed so far, one was said to be an adolescent relative of an embassy employee; another was identified by the US Defence Department as Kenneth Hobson, a member of the embassy's administrative staff, from Missouri. Another six Americans were missing. Four people were reported to have been found alive in the wreckage. Six were killed in the Tanzania explosion, none of them Americans and 60 injured.

President Clinton was awoken to be told the news at 0530 Washington time. It was immediately announced that the US Air Force was sending military aircraft loaded with supplies and medical staff to both countries. A Marine Corps anti-terrorism unit was also dispatched, along with FBI investigators and protection teams to secure the embassies.

He announced that security at all US embassies had been stepped up, but warned of the extreme difficulty of ensuring protection against car bombs, especially where older buildings were concerned.

US officials refused to be drawn on who might be responsible for the attacks, saying that this was a matter for the intelligence services. The State Department stressed that the US received more than 30,000 threats a year and had to weigh the seriousness of each one. It said, however, that so far as it was aware, no telephoned warnings had been received at either of the embassies hit.

One US official, however, requesting anonymity, said that the attack had all the hallmarks of Middle Eastern terrorist groups, including Jihad, the banned Egyptian terrorist group. According to unconfirmed reports, on which US officials rfused to comment, this group, Jihad, had threatened US embassies only three days before in a message to the French news agency, AFP. It reportedly cited the arrests of three individuals in Albania in recent weeks.

Observers drew comparisons in technique and coordination with the car bomb attack on the Khobar Towers barracks building in Saudi Arabia in 1996. The State Department said that yesterday's atacks appeared to be the first time two apparently coordinated bombings had been directed at US targets abroad.

Eyewitnesses in Nairobi said that hundreds f people were injured by flying glass, and a bus that was driving past the embassy was destroyed, along with its occupants. They spoke of pandemonium as dozens in the Ufundi building climbed out onto the roof in terror and hundrds more fled the area, many badly wounded, beneath a giant pall of smoke. Hospitals were overwhelmed.

The explosion in Dar es Salaam destroyed two-thirds of the embassy building and set cars on fire. The US has received a series of warnings from Islamic groups this year. On 12 June, the State Department issued ageneral warning after Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian national who has been an influential financier of radical Islamic groups, threatened US targets all over the world.

But that warning was specifically in reference to the Middle East and South Asia. During the last confrontation with Iraq, a number of Islamic groups including Mr Bin Laden warned America that they would strike if it used military force against Baghdad.