Grenade 'thrown at embassy'

African bombings: FBI questions security guard who saw driver of pick-up truck assault compound

A KENYAN security guard who could hold the key to the identity of the bombers of the US embassy in Nairobi was yesterday being grilled by FBI agents.

The man, an employee of a private security firm contracted by the embassy, has told colleagues he was manning the entrance gate at the back of the embassy building on Friday morning when a pick-up tried to enter the compound.

"When the vehicle was refused entry, the driver threw what appeared to be a grenade," said Harun Sorobea, a manager with United International Investigative Services, yesterday. "In the confusion he ran away. The bomb went off soon after. He is lucky to be alive."

Mr Sorobea's account was cut short by a more senior member of UIIS, an American-based company which specialises in government security, who said the US embassy had asked the company not to speak to journalists. The FBI has so far released no information about its investigations.

The story is consistent with reports in an American newspaper, based on information from anonymous diplomatic officials, that a vehicle tried to gain access to the embassy at the front entrance and came round the back when that was refused. The report in the Washington Post claimed a grenade attack was launched at the embassy's rear entrance.

Another UIIS guard, Joash Okindo, was "exclusively interviewed" in the East African Standard yesterday. The newspaper quoted him as saying that he and other security men were engaged in a gun battle with five armed "Arab-looking" bombers who entered the rear compound. Mr Okindo allegedly claimed several colleagues were killed in a grenade attack. However, UIIS insists none of its employees died.

Yesterday Mr Okindo's colleagues were scathing about this exclusive. They claim Mr Okindo was the last point of defence between the rear gate and the building and that he took the brunt of the explosion. He was so badly injured - even the Standard reports that he suffered serious head injuries and his legs and arm were almost severed - that he was in intensive care until Sunday, when he was flown to a US base in Germany for treatment.

The problem for the FBI is that if some of the "witnesses" were close enough to see what they claimed to have seen, it is a miracle they lived to tell the tale. It is almost certain that the bombers - or bomber - did not.

The FBI's investigation in Nairobi is starting to gain momentum as the search for survivors winds down in the wreckage of Ufundi House, the four- storey office block behind the embassy which was flattened by the blast.

Across the road from Ufundi, the FBI have made the extensively damaged Nairobi railway station the focus for the search for forensic evidence.

Meanwhile, Tanzanian police are holding 14 people, including six Sudanese and six Iraqis, for questioning in connection with the simultaneous bomb attack on the US embassy in Dar es Salaam.

Last night the Nairobi bomb site again fell silent as listening devices were again lowered into the tangled metal and concrete. Not a sound was heard.

More than 22 dead have been recovered since Monday night and almost all hope has gone of finding any other survivors. Sammy Nganga, a Kenyan scrap metal dealer, will probably be remembered as the only bomb victim to be pulled alive from Ufundi House

Rose Wanjuki, the woman he befriended beneath the ruins and had to leave behind with the promise that help was on its way, is now unlikely to be recovered alive. The death toll in the Nairobi bomb attack is likely to rise to over 230.