Relatives Walk a Line of Death

The manicured lawns and well-tended flower beds outside Nairobi’s main mortuary Saturday belied a scene of horror inside.

In somber silence, relatives of those still missing after Friday’s car bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in downtown Nairobi stood huddled in small groups, bracing themselves for the ordeal they were about to face.

Then a door was opened, and an official ushered them in.

A grim, single-file procession passed slowly through the narrow building, picking its way over the dozens of bodies that littered the floor.

An eerie hush filled the room, broken only by the sound of shuffling feet and an occasional muffled cry as a body was recognized.

But many of the corpses that lay side by side or were piled atop each other across the entire length of the mortuary floor were beyond recognition.

When the last people in the procession filed through the exit, they left bloodstained floors and the stench of charred flesh. Morgue attendants in the room lighted cigarettes, ignoring the no-smoking signs around them.

There were 78 bodies inside the City Mortuary, Nairobi’s biggest morgue, out of the 140 confirmed dead. Unable to cope with more, officials were sending additional corpses to other morgues around the city. Only 32 bodies had been identified.

On a garden bench outside sat a young woman in tears. A few yards away, a man was being comforted by friends. He had just seen the body of his wife.

But the vast majority of the hundreds who passed through the morgue did not find the loved ones they were seeking.

Many victims are still feared trapped under the rubble of the six-story Ufundi Cooperative House, which bore the brunt of the blast.