The Kenyan authorities have arrested a number of people in connection with the deadly car bomb attack on the US embassy in Nairobi, the President, Mr Daniel arap Moi, said yesterday.
"A number of persons have been detained in relation to this incident and are providing useful leads into the circumstances surrounding the bomb blast," Mr Moi said, but he gave no further details of the arrests.
FBI agents are assisting the Kenyan police in the bomb probe.
Earlier in the day, a woman who had been signalling to rescuers from underneath the rubble of a bombed building was taken out dead.
Ms Rose Wanjiku, who had only just died, was found in the early hours of the morning when Israeli soldiers removed the layer of wreckage that had trapped her near a lift shaft. Her will to survive her ordeal after the building was levelled in last Friday's terrorist attack on the US embassy had inspired her rescuers to keep digging.
A number of people were pulled out alive from the collapsed office block in the aftermath of the bomb blast but most of the occupants were taken out dead. Work on removing the rubble continues but the search for survivors is now officially over.
Ms Wanjiku had last been heard tapping on Monday. She had last spoken to Kenya Red Cross workers on Sunday. Saturday was the last day someone was brought out alive from under the hundreds of tonnes of rubble which was Ufundi Co-op House.
The five-storey building stood next to the US embassy in Nairobi's city centre. The bomb exploded in a car park behind the embassy. The US ambassador to Kenya, Ms Prudence Bushnell, was among dignitaries who yesterday evening attended a ceremony at the bomb site for the victims.
The attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania killed more than 250 people and injured some 5,000. The bodies of a dozen American embassy staff killed in the Nairobi explosion are due to arrive at Andrew's Air Force base outside Washington today.
Agencies report:
A US military aircraft left Germany yesterday bringing the remains of a US air force sergeant killed in the Nairobi bomb attack back to the US.
The body of Senior Master Sergeant Sherry Lynn Olds, which had been stored with the remains of 10 other victims of the bombing at a US military hospital in Landstuhl, was loaded onto a C-5 Galaxy transport plane at the nearby Ramstein air base. The body of Sgt Olds, a native of Panama City, Florida, was flown back early at her family's request, US officials said.
Air force members and other base staff at Ramstein held a ceremony on the runway. Six air force soldiers in blue uniforms carried the container, draped in a US flag, bearing their comrade's remains into the back of the plane.
Shortly after that flight, another aircraft carrying seven US citizens wounded in the blast also took off from the base for the US. The wounded had been flown to Landstuhl military hospital from Nairobi on Sunday.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, arrived at Ramstein last night to visit wounded patients still at Land stuhl and then accompany the bodies of 10 other victims back to the US.
The German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, greeted Ms Albright on her arrival and took part in a wreath-laying ceremony to express Bonn's condolences.
The US was warned in advance that its Nairobi embassy was a terrorist bomb target, an Israeli newspaper claimed yesterday. Ha'aretz reported that Israel advised US officials to treat the warning with scepticism .
The warning came shortly before the attacks, the report said. According to Ha'aretz, at an internal briefing following the attack, an Israeli security official said that prior to the bombing, the US had asked Israeli intelligence for an assessment of the source's credibility. Mr Aviv Bushinksy, a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netan yahu, refused to comment on the report. - (AP, Reuters)
The official death toll from the Nairobi attack stood at 247 people yesterday. Ten people were also killed in the attack in Dar es Salaam.