The US said yesterday there was increasing reason to believe al-Qaeda was involved in last week's twin attacks on Israelis in Kenya, where reports suggested authorities received bomb warnings months ago.
A missile launcher used in a failed attack on an Israeli airliner has been linked to al-Qaeda, a US official said. Washington also believed a statement purporting to be from the group claiming it carried out the assaults was credible.
A suicide bombing killed the three bombers, three Israelis and 10 Kenyans at an Israeli-owned hotel in the coastal resort of Mombasa on Thursday. An almost simultaneous missile attack narrowly missed the Israeli airliner taking off nearby.
It was the African country's bloodiest bomb attack since the 1998 US embassy bombings widely thought to be the work of guerrillas linked to Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden.
"The fighters of al-Qaeda return to the same place where the Crusader-Jewish coalition was hit four years ago," said the statement posted on the Internet, referring to the bomb attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed 224 people, most of them Africans.
In Washington, a US official said the statement, signed by the "Political Office of Qaeda al-Jihad" and posted on an Islamist Web site, was being viewed as credible. He said there was increasing reason to believe that al-Qaeda was involved.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the serial number on the missile fired at an Israeli airliner last week was close in sequence to a missile fired at a US military aircraft in Saudi Arabia.
"Essentially, the serial number found in the Prince Sultan Air base attack last May is close in sequence to that used in Kenya, suggesting it came from the same batch," he said.
Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi headed to Washington yesterday for talks with US President George W. Bush, who has pledged US help to track down the culprits in the attacks.
"With the assistance of our international partners, we shall apprehend any surviving culprits," Moi said, who was due to make a brief stop in London before flying to Washington to meet Bush tomorrow.
In related news, Israeli intelligence had advance warning that terror groups were operating in Kenya but did not have information that they were planning to attack Israeli targets, an army intelligence chief said.
The chief of research in Israel's military intelligence, Brigadier General Yossi Kupperwasser, told a parliamentary committee Monday that Israel did not have specific information -- like Germany and Australia did -- that attacks were being planned in Mombasa, Kenya, Knesset spokesman Giora Pordes said yesterday.
Germany and Australia put out advisories in middle of last month warning their citizens against visiting Mombasa, based on intelligence they had that terror groups were planning attacks on Western targets in the Kenyan port city.
Asked by a legislator whether Israel had similar information, Pordes quoted Kupperwasser as saying: "No, there was no concrete and exact information. There was general information, but not regarding Israeli targets, rather on the attempt to carry out an attack in Kenya. Israel was never mentioned."
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