6 From Iraq Among 14 Arrested in Tanzania

Foreigners arrested here in connection with Friday’s terrorist bombing at the U.S. Embassy include citizens of Iraq and Sudan, two countries whose relations with the United States have been strained for years.

Authorities in this capital said Tuesday that six Iraqis and six Sudanese are among 14 “dubious characters” being detained by police, but the men have not been charged with a crime, and Tanzanian police remain vague about how they might be related to the blast that killed 10 people here.

“Intelligence information suggests that they may have taken part in the incident,” said Tanzanian police spokesman Aden Mwanunyange, offering no elaboration.

In Washington, meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State Patrick F. Kennedy told reporters Tuesday that “maybe a half-dozen” U.S. embassies have shut briefly in recent days because of threats.

He refused to identify the closed embassies. However, senior Clinton administration officials said they included the embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Kampala, Uganda. The U.S. embassy in Mbabane, Swaziland, was evacuated for a time Tuesday because of a bomb threat.

“We are not shutting the embassies down in a permanent sense,” Kennedy said. “We are taking, in effect, a brief timeout in order to make the security adjustments that are necessary to be responsive to a threat.”

It was unclear how common it is that six embassies would be closed at the same time. It is up to the ambassador to evaluate the incidents and decide what steps to take, including, if necessary, a temporary shutdown.

Investigators looking into Friday’s bombing here in Tanzania suffered a setback Tuesday: A senior State Department security official said the surveillance camera monitoring the embassy entrance where the explosion occurred did not record the incident on tape.

The official who briefed reporters said the camera was connected only to a viewing monitor, not a recording device. He said the surveillance systems here and at many embassies worldwide was designed decades ago, when the U.S. was less worried about “criminal activity” at overseas installations.

But the twin terrorist attacks last week at the U.S. embassies here and in Nairobi, Kenya, have led to a stepped-up reassessment of the systems, he said. U.S. officials began this week to add filming capabilities to the equipment at embassies throughout the world. “We are putting them in as we speak,” the official said.

Suspects Lacked Passports

Tanzanian police said the suspects from Sudan--where the U.S. Embassy was shut in 1996 because of terrorist concerns--include a teenager and a man who said he works here for the Saudi Arabian Embassy, Mwanunyange said.

The Iraqis include a teacher, a civil servant, a telecommunications technician, an engineer and an agricultural engineer, the police spokesman said. The U.S. cut off diplomatic relations with Iraq after that country’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which resulted in the Persian Gulf War and a near-decade of animosity between Washington and Baghdad.

A Somali and a Turk were also arrested. Police said the arrests were made in cooperation with the FBI, but U.S. investigators refused to comment.

“All the above-mentioned people failed to produce their passports,” Mwanunyange said at a news conference. “They were unable to explain satisfactorily their presence in the country.”

Even without videotape from the security camera, it is possible that some of the action leading up to last week’s explosion was viewed by U.S. Marine guards, the State Department security official said. The Marines monitor activity at the embassy compound from a panel of television screens inside the building.

The official also predicted that the embassy in Dar es Salaam will be rebuilt farther from town so it can comply with U.S. government requirements that include 100-foot perimeters around buildings that were not possible at the existing center-city location. A similar recommendation is likely in Nairobi, officials said.

But even with stronger, more secluded embassies, the State Department official said, Americans will not be safe from terrorism. “It will drive terrorists to softer targets,” he said. “It will drive them to your house and to hostage-taking. We built fortresses in Beirut and it led to hostage-taking.”

In Nairobi, an embassy security guard quoted in a Kenyan newspaper said there was a violent clash between mission personnel and the terrorists before the bomb exploded. The East African Standard, one of Kenya’s three major dailies, reported that guard Joash Okindo and his colleagues confronted five men, stopping them at a barrier to the embassy’s front parking lot. The guards forced them to turn into the rear parking area.

Local guards are instructed to admit only vehicles that bear diplomatic license plates or those that they recognize.

According to Okindo--whose legs and left arm were almost severed--the attackers jumped out of the truck and opened fire with automatic rifles on the guards, who were armed only with clubs. At least one Marine returned fire, and one of the assailants threw a hand grenade. The truck exploded moments later, he told the newspaper.

On Tuesday, four days after the devastating attack, Nairobi was moving closer to normal life, with several damaged buildings in the vicinity of the U.S. Embassy receiving clearance for renewed occupation.

City officials said that protective canopies were being placed on surrounding buildings, which still have shattered windows and other hanging debris. Cleanup crews, working in nearby high-rises that withstood the blast, were being told to wrap up any metal they find in paper, label it, indicate where it was found and hand it to investigators.

Kenyan military officials said they expect the cleanup effort at the Ufundi Cooperative House, a five-story building that collapsed in the explosion, to be completed Thursday.

Touring the blast site, Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi said the total damage could exceed $500 million. On Tuesday, the death toll from the Nairobi blast reached at least 218; more than 240 bomb victims were still hospitalized, seven of them in intensive care. Nearly 5,000 people were injured.

Bodies Returning Thursday

President Clinton announced that he will meet the plane scheduled to arrive at Andrews Air Force Base on Thursday with the bodies of the Americans who died in Nairobi. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was to leave for Ramstein Air Base in Germany this morning to meet some of the injured American and African embassy personnel and accompany the bodies back to the United States.

In all, 12 Americans died in the Nairobi explosion. But the family of Jean Dalizu decided to bury her in Kenya, and the family of Senior Master Sgt. Sherry Olds of the Air Force asked that her body be returned earlier than the others to Florida.

Speaking at an event in San Bruno, Calif., Clinton said that, despite the carnage in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, “I think it is important that we all, as Americans, send a clear signal to the world that we are not going to back away from our involvement with other people, and we are not going to back away from our opposition to terrorism.”

At a State Department ceremony, the African diplomatic corps called on Albright to express its condolences for the loss of American lives. Egyptian Ambassador Ahmed Maher said: “Terrorism is inconsistent with our African history, our tradition, our culture and our beliefs. We therefore condemn in the strongest terms this heinous and unacceptable act, which has been perpetrated against the peoples of America and Africa.”

Times staff writers Stanley Meisler and Robin Wright in Washington and special correspondent Elias Okach in Nairobi contributed to this report.