Ceremonies are taking place to mark the first anniversary of the bomb attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which more than 200 people died. Thousands of people, including survivors and relatives of the dead, attended ceremonies at the site of the attacks. Today has been declared a day of national mourning in Kenya. Earlier, President Clinton paid tribute to those who died and said that the United States would not rest until it had captured the perpetrators. Washington believes the attacks were masterminded by the Saudi dissident, Osama Bin Laden.
Thousands of Kenyans gathered at the grounds of the former American embassy in Nairobi to remember the 214 people who died in the terrorist bomb blast. Religious leaders offered prayers, and President Daniel arap Moi, other officials and families of the victims laid wreaths at the scene of the tragedy. The US Deputy Chief of Mission, Michael Marine, laid a wreath on behalf of the US government. Soldiers from the Kenyan army sounded the trumpet in honour of the departed. The embassy was demolished after the tragedy, and the grounds where the mission stood are being converted by the US government into a memorial garden to honour those who were killed in the car bomb attack.
The blast in Nairobi killed 202 Kenyans and 12 Americans and injured around 5,000 people, while a nearly simultaneous car-bomb attack in Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania, left 11 local people dead and 70 wounded. Most victims in the Nairobi blast died when the four-storey Ufundi Co-operative House beside the embassy collapsed burying scores of workers alive.
