Washington, DC — "It's premature to rule al-Quaeda in or out in these incidents," deputy White House press secretary Gordon Johndroe said during his Thanksgiving intelligence briefing Thursday.
President Bush who is spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend at his central Texas ranch, was notified by intelligence officials of the attack at a Mombasa beach hotel and a simultaneous unsuccessful missile assault on an Israeli airliner taking off nearby, Johndroe said.
In a written statement, Secretary of State Colin Powell condemned "in the strongest terms" terrorist bombings that took place outside of Mombasa, Kenya earlier Thursday. "We call on the international community to do everything possible to bring to justice those responsible for committing or supporting thse attacks," said Powell.
Police said they were questioning two people seized near the scene of the hotel bomb. In a fax sent to the Reuters news agency by a Lebanese media organization, a group calling itself "the Government of Universal Palestine in Exile, The Army of Palestine" claimed responsibility for the action. Before making this claim the group was unheard of.
Officials in Israel and Kenya consider al-Quaeda, which bombed the U.S. embassy in Nairobi in 1998 as the likely perpetrator of Thursday's missile attack against an Israeli airliner leaving Mombasa and the car bomb explosion in the Paradise Hotel in Kikambala, about 15 miles north of Mombasa a few minutes later. Fifteen people, including two children, are reported dead as a result of the breakfast-time attack. Nine were Kenyan; three were Israeli and three were the attackers.
"We can't rule out the group that struck at us in 1998," said Kenyan Vice President Musalia Mudavadi, adding that Kenyan intelligence had received reports that the country could be targeted again by terrorists.
Although the two missiles fired at the aircraft missed, terrorism experts consider the attacks well-planned and exactly timed, a hallmark of al-Quaeda's sophistication.
Meanwhile, in an advisory, the Department of State is urging U.S. citizens to exercise "extra caution" at hotels and other tourist areas in Kenya.
In a telephone call, National Security Advisor Condoleeza rice expressed condoloences on behalf of President Bush to Dov Weisglass, director-general of Israel's Prime Minister's office.
