Suspects Held in Tanzania Blast

Police here rounded up a dozen suspects Monday for questioning as a witness in Kenya said bombers there masqueraded as U.S. Embassy guards in what may be important breaks in the investigation into terrorist attacks at the American missions last week.

Tanzanian authorities refused to reveal details about the detained men. But U.S. officials in Washington said “three groups of suspects”--all believed to be foreigners--are being detained for questioning about the blast that killed 10 people here. Media reports in Dar es Salaam, the capital, have said that Muslim extremists are the focus of the probe.

“We want to hear what comes out of the suspects,” said Susan E. Rice, assistant secretary of State for African affairs, who cautioned that the detentions in Tanzania should not raise expectations of imminent breakthroughs in the case.

The witness of the attack in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi said in an interview with The Times that the bombers there drove a pickup truck and disguised themselves as employees of the security company contracted by the embassy to patrol the building.

“I saw a man jump from the back of the pickup truck,” said Christopher Ochieng Okwach, a Kenyan government driver, who was stuck in traffic near the embassy’s rear entrance. “He was wearing clothes like the security guards who guard the embassy.”

Okwach said the man ran toward the embassy carrying something that looked like a police radio. He pointed the device toward the building before climbing back into the rear of the truck, he said.

“When I saw him do that, I thought they were bank robbers,” said Okwach, who was ferrying a forestry official from the Kenyan Ministry of Natural Resources. “I told my boss, ‘This place is not good,’ and immediately I heard a loud bang.”

An official from United International Investigative Services, the firm contracted by the U.S. Embassy to guard the compound, said the security guards on duty the day of the bombing were being held by U.S. investigators for questioning. One of the guards was released Monday after intensive interrogation, according to a colleague. It was unknown when the others would be allowed to return home.

Joash Okindo, a guard injured in Friday’s explosion, was initially placed in the intensive-care ward at a Nairobi hospital but reportedly has since been airlifted by U.S. officials out of Kenya.

Tension Spills Over in Probe

Meanwhile, FBI officials in both East African capitals Monday began in earnest the American investigations into the blasts, which killed more than 190 people and injured about 5,000.

The mood was tense at the two explosion sites, which are about 450 miles apart, as pressure grew for the Americans to produce some results and the political dimensions of the coordinated explosions became clearer.

The tension has spilled over to American relations with the Kenyans and Israelis, who arrived Saturday to lead the search for survivors. Kenyan officials are angered by the slow pace of recovering their people from the U.S. Embassy building; by late Monday, there were still nine Kenyans missing there.

As for the Israelis, they were offended by the tight surveillance placed on their canine search teams by American diplomats, who apparently were worried their Middle East allies might use the opportunity to sift through classified material while in the unmanned building.

“You had Beirut, Saudi Arabia and now [East Africa],” said a U.S. official, referring to terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies during the past two decades. “There are a lot of very worried people and agencies in Washington. There are going to be congressional hearings and finger pointing.”

‘Time Is Running Out’

FBI agents, joined by about a dozen Kenyan military experts, combed through a badly trampled Nairobi bomb site trying to preserve charred automobile parts and pieces of the demolished embassy for any clue to the terrorists’ identity. The Kenyan army was enlisted to assist, with soldiers climbing on rooftops and in trees to remove tangled chunks of steel.

“We’re looking for metal and pieces of a vehicle,” one FBI official said. “Anything that might be involved in the explosion.”

Across the street, Israeli and Kenyan rescue crews desperately tried to free the last woman known to be alive in the rubble of the Ufundi Cooperative House, though their efforts were eclipsed by the discovery of more bodies and the growing stench of rotting corpses.

“That is No. 9 today,” said a despondent Red Cross volunteer, as a victim in a body bag was lowered from atop a huge mound of debris near the back entrance to the U.S. Embassy. “Time is running out.”

Kenyan military officials acknowledged that the search and rescue effort was going very slowly. Maj. Gen. George Agoi, commander of the Kenyan effort, said that camera probes were being used to detect bodies and any sign of life below the second- and third-floors of the former Ufundi building.

“The emotional side is very, very hard,” said Meital Hallawi, 19, of the Israeli army rescue unit. “You can see what their face looked like before they died. But you just have to be technical. . . . It’s hard.”

Sammy Nganga, a scrap metal worker, who late Sunday was brought out alive from the rubble, said he was trapped in a stairwell for 36 hours, in a space about 4-by-4 feet. He sat on a small ledge, his left leg shattered and a gash in his head, which doctors later confirmed was 6 inches wide.

“I thought about death,” Nganga, 45, said from his hospital bed. “It was totally dark.”

He never lost consciousness and could hear a woman’s voice coming from what he believed to be a nearby elevator shaft. The woman, known only as Rose, was long believed to be the last trapped survivor, though rescuers Monday pumped oxygen into another patch of debris after detecting a cavern. “We are crossing our fingers that we may get a few more [people] alive,” Agoi said.

In the interview with The Times, Okwach, the government driver, said he did not see the bomber’s face but noticed he had black hair and was of slight build and medium height. “From the way he jumped out of the van, he struck me as very physically fit,” said the driver, who has not yet been interviewed by American or Kenyan investigators.

About three minutes later, Okwach said he heard a big bang and he saw the pickup turn into “a huge fireball and thick black smoke.”

“Our car was lifted off the ground, and then hit the ground,” he said. “There was glass everywhere.”

Then he heard a another blast, not as powerful as the second, but slightly stronger than the first one, which had sounded like a tire bursting. Okwach blacked out. When he regained consciousness, his boss was no longer in the vehicle, the roof of which had almost entirely caved in. Okwach, who sustained a injury on his right leg, got out of his jeep, and limped aimlessly toward the perimeter of the capital railway station a few yards away. He heard a group of people walking behind him say, “Those people were Arabs.”

People Scatter Amid Chaos

Charles Utolo, Okwach’s boss, who was reading the paper, said the first noise sounded like a pistol shot and originated from the direction of Cooperative Bank House. He stopped reading and looked up and across the street toward the embassy. People were running in all directions.

“About 40 seconds later, there was a loud bang, and all the glass windows in our car were shattered,” said Utolo, who sustained a deep cut on the forehead and several facial injuries. “I tried to get out, but the door was stuck, because it had kind of caved inward, so I got through the window.”

Utolo, 38, a father of five, said he did not see the pickup truck or the men his driver had noticed. “Everything happened so fast, and when I got out of the car people were running in all directions.”

Utolo ran, too. When he eventually stopped, he was bleeding badly from his head wound. A Samaritan transported him to a nearby hospital.

Benjamin Kivindu Mbali, a tree nursery attendant in Utolo’s department, had alighted from Utolo’s car in heavy traffic near Cooperative Bank House before they reached the U.S. Embassy. A few yards from the skyscraper, gun shots rang out. Mbali, who was walking toward Cooperative Bank House, recalled he saw one watchman--whose job it was to man the entrance to the parking lot behind of the embassy--take off running toward him.

Thinking this was a robbery and the armed thieves were headed in his direction, Mbali also started to run. That’s when he heard a bang. And then another--a hundred times louder. The force of the blast knocked Mbali to the ground, and he remembered seeing darkness. When he staggered to his feet a few minutes later, he realized he was several feet away from where he had started to run. “It’s a miracle that I was not cut anywhere,” said Mbali, 30, a father of two.

Nganga, the scrap metal worker who survived the blast, also heard gunfire minutes before the blast. He was using the phone in a first-floor office when he heard shots followed by a “loud thump.” Ng’anga joined others as they all rushed into the hall. Then came the second blast.

In Washington, the Clinton administration announced plans to hold a Thursday service in honor of the slain Americans.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is to fly today to a U.S. military base in Germany to see injured victims evacuated from Kenya and escort the bodies home.

The White House said President Clinton would cut short a three-day cross-country fund-raising trip and return to Washington today to deal with the bombing and attend a service.

U.S. Receives New Threats

In Louisville, Ken., Clinton said the United States must be “strong” in dealing with the double blow, and “not be deterred” by the threat of other terrorist action.

Meantime, U.S. intelligence has launched an intensive investigation into known extremist groups that have been active on four continents in an effort to identify telltale patterns, methods, equipment or contacts that might provide a link to the East Africa bombings.

One of the most active probes now focuses on the East African business connections of Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, the son of a wealthy construction family who was based in Sudan between 1991 and 1996, U.S. officials said.

Bin Laden ran a construction company while in Sudan, which borders Kenya. “He did most of his work then through this construction company in Khartoum, and there’s no doubt that things even then also went into the Horn [of Africa] and East Africa,” said a source. “That East Africa network is probably still alive.”

Bin Laden was effectively expelled from Sudan after months of pressure exerted by the United States and Saudi Arabia on Sudan’s militant Islamic government. But he maintained business and political ties in the area after returning to Afghanistan.

Murphy reported from Dar es Salaam and Nairobi and Simmons from Nairobi. Times staff writer Robin Wright in Washington and special correspondent Elias Okach in Nairobi also contributed to this report.