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From the ERRI Watch Center

NAIROBI (EmergencyNet News) - The death toll in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania rose to at least 107 by Saturday morning. The number of wounded topped 2,212. At least eight Americans died in Kenya. The U.S. State Department said a child was among those killed and five other Americans were still missing.

More than two dozen FBI agents and bomb experts boarded U.S. military flights for Africa within hours of the bombings to investigate. FBI spokesman Frank Scafidi said in Washington, "Our top priority at the scene is to determine the kind of explosive device that was used and the kind of vehicle that carried it there. Knowing the kind of explosive and vehicle can be like a fingerprint of who did it."

Early reports said that no one had claimed responsibility for the attacks.

ERRI senior analyst and acknowleged terrorism expert Clark Staten said on Friday, "The people who commited these acts in Africa were not amateurs...they were professionals and their methods were consistent with those that have carried out terror attacks before ... the synchronous timing of the events, if nothing else, would suggest a high degree of coordination and local thugs in Tanzania and Kenya would not have the necessary sophistication to carry out such an operation in an ad hoc way."

In Nairobi on Saturday, rescuers said they could hear at least three people calling out for help from inside a debris-filled elevator shaft, plus a fourth person trapped nearby. The number of deaths in Kenya has reached more than 100. More dead victims are expected to be found as debris is cleared.

In the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, at least seven people were killed and 72 hurt. No Americans were believed killed in Dar es Salaam. Car bombs were believed to have caused both blasts, Kenyan and Tanzanian officials said.

The bombings were the first major international terror attacks against the United States since a 25 June 1996, truck bomb outside a housing complex in Saudi Arabia killed 19 Americans. More than 500 people were injured.

Friday's blast in Kenya damaged at least 53 buildings, severed phone and power lines and shattered windows as far as ten blocks away.

Officials in the United States, Kenya and Tanzania refused to speculate on who was responsible. A group calling itself the Army for the Liberation of Islamic Shrines claimed responsibility in a phone call to the Cairo office of Al-Hayat, a daily Arabic language newspaper published in London, late on Friday. Al-Hayat said the caller was speaking in an Arabic dialect which was not Egyptian. The caller did not state where the group was based, describe its nature, or give the nationalities of its members. The news- paper reported that the caller said the details of the two bombing operations would be "declared later."

Another group, the Islamic Jihad, vowed last week to strike American interests because some of its members were arrested in Albania, according to a report Thursday in Al-Hayat. But counterterrorism experts say that the two operations in Kenya and Tanzania would've been months in the making. Several groups use the name Islamic Jihad. This one is considered the successor to groups that assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

One suspected terrorist being examined in the wake of the explosions is exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden has threatened a holy war against U.S. troops and Americans. He also is suspected of backing other terrorist acts including the 1996 attack in Saudi Arabia.

ERRI's Staten said, "All of my remarks should be prefaced by the under- standing that there is much evidence to be gathered and many facts to gather ... it is way too early to draw firm conclusions about who the perpetrators in Africa were, or what their possible motivation might be ... But I would place the members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Osama Bin-Laden organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah high on the list of suspects that could have been involved in this attack. All have the the methods, motive and opportunity to have carried out these attacks ... all have made threats against the United States in recent times, and all have the people trained to carry it out."

Former CIA counterterrorism specialist Stanley Bedlington agreed with Staten about bin Laden. Bedlington said, "He more or less predicted what would happen -- that there would be attacks against U.S. targets in the next few weeks. And lo and behold it has happened. I would consider bin Laden a prime suspect."

Another unnamed U.S official agreed. "High on the list would have to be Osama bin Laden," he said.

Bin Laden is believed to have links to Egypt's banned Jihad group which, as recently as this week, said it would retaliate against what it said was Washington's help in extraditing Islamists to Cairo from Albania.

As ERRI previously reported, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad said this week: "We inform the Americans ... of preparations for a response which we hope they read with care, because we will write it, with God's help, in a language they will understand."

Bedlington said there was more to such threats than big talk. He said, "They have a track record. Jihad has carried out a number of attacks. These are not just groups who do a lot of empty talking. They act."

"And there is a motivation, which Osama bin Laden has set out from time to time," Bedlington added. "He is an Islamic extremist who believes that Western influence, represented by the United States, is the Great Satan which is sullying the purity of Islam."

The U.S. official said groups like Hizbollah, the Lebanese-based terror group blamed for kidnapping Westerners in the 1980s, were secondary suspects, and he said he doubted any government was at work. He said, "Most of those folks tend to be focusing more inside their own borders these days. The Iraqis, for instance, we don't think have got the capability or the interest in doing much outside their own border."

Clark Staten added, "The operations in Africa follow appear to be following a pattern we at ERRI have been studying since the World Trade Center bombing in New York City. These kinds of operations are designed to confuse investigations and obfuscate the true identity of those sponsoring these dastardly acts ... they seem to involve groups of terrorists that are specially brought together for the purposes of committing the atrocity and then dispersed back to their hiding places in sympathetic countries."

Neither Kenya nor Tanzania has a history of international terrorist attacks. Both embassies were considered low risk, perhaps making them attractive targets. Compared with other African countries, foreigners can enter and leave Kenya and Tanzania with relative ease, possibly making it easier for terrorists to attack.

U.S. emergency medical teams arrived in the Kenyan capital on Saturday to assist in rescue efforts. A C-130 aircraft carrying 44 personnel with medical supplies, food and communications equipment landed early on Saturday, while a C-141 landed shortly after 0900 hours local time (0600 GMT) with more medical equipment.

Further "rapid-deployment" teams from the Pentagon and Federal Bureau of Investigation were due to arrive over the weekend. Israel is also sending a team with expertise in rescuing people from bombed buildings. A spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Nairobi said that 200 Israeli soldiers trained in rescues from collapsed buildings were due to arrive in Nairobi in the afternoon.

By early next week, the FBI said that more than 120 FBI employees are likely to be in Kenya and Tanzania, and they may be there for months. In addition to those who left Andrews Air Force Base, other agents were pulled off overseas assignments and from FBI legal attache' offices abroad and sent to east Africa. Many were veterans of the truck bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex near Dhahran. Every FBI team dispatched abroad also carries language specialists.

The host governments will control the crime scene where FBI agents, forensic specialists and technicians will try to gather two key pieces of evidence as soon as possible. The FBI evidence response teams sent to bomb sites are trained to collect and preserve evidence at the scene. Agents dispatched to gather evidence carry plastic and paper bags, gloves, fingerprint kits, brooms, shovels, Q-tips, toothbrushes, cameras and picks to mine crime scenes. For heavy lifting of rubble they will have to depend on local authorities or borrow equipment from the U.S. military.

The FBI team works as part of a larger U.S. government operation that includes the intelligence agencies, the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, military personnel and others.

A separate U.S. military security unit of at least 40 marines, the Fleet anti-terrorist Security Team (FAST), was being flown to Nairobi by Central Command. The FAST units are made up of 44 enlisted Marines and one officer. They are designed to help protect against terrorist attacks at military installations, units and ships. They can also provide other emergency security operations, as approved by the Navy and Marine Corps' top leaders.

Two companies, or about 480 Marines, make up the FAST companies that are based in Norfolk, Virginia, and Yorktown, Virginia. They often deploy around the world, and the 40-man team being sent into Kenya had just been in Qatar in the Persian Gulf. At any given time, three units are outside the continental United States while two units remain on alert at their home stations.

Kenya's newspapers on Saturday gave extensive and sometimes conflicting coverage to the blasts. The East African Standard carried one story on an inside page which quoted an unnamed police officer as saying two people had been arrested by police minutes after the blast and they had three bombs "two of which exploded, but the third did not." A separate story, however, quoted Kenyan and U.S. officials as saying they had no word on suspects.

The Daily Nation quoted unnamed U.S. and Kenyan security sources as saying a lone suicide bomber had blown himself up in the blast, but also carried a picture of "a suspect" being led away by security guards. Police and U.S. officials have repeatedly been saying that no one has been arrested in connection with the blasts and have made no mention of a suicide bomber.

Thailand has increased security at the U.S. embassy in Bangkok following the two huge car bomb attacks at embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Police Major General Sawek Watanakij, the head of Thailand's special branch, said that protective measures were reinforced despite the already tight security at the mission.

(C)Copyright, EmergencyNet NEWS Service, 1998. All Rights Reserved. Further redistribution without permission is prohibited by law.

The ERRI DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT is a subscription publication of the EmergencyNet NEWS Service, which is a part of the Chicago-based Emergency Response and Research Institute. This publication specializes in Security/Terrorism/Intelligence/Military and National Security issues.

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