Terror threat cancels port call

2005-10-03 12:59

Nairobi - A United States cruise ship carrying hundreds of university students has cancelled a port call in Kenya planned for this week following Washington's renewal of a regional terrorism warning for Eeast Africa, officials said on Monday.

The potential threat from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network outlined in the state department's September 23 terror alert caused the cancellation of the MV Explorer's scheduled four-day stop in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, they said.

"This information was shared with them and the decision was made not to dock," said an official with the US embassy in Nairobi, noting that the advisory contained a "specific mention of al-Qaeda activities in the region."

The Explorer, with more than 600 US and foreign university students enrolled in the Semester at Sea global studies programme on board, had been due to stop at Mombasa on Friday but abruptly cancelled the visit last week.

"In light of the recent state department public announcement regarding travel to East Africa, we felt it prudent to alter our itinerary and cancel the visit to Mombasa, Kenya," the programme said.

Safety first

"Our decisions related to the itinerary are always made with the utmost care and consideration, with the safety of the shipboard community as our first priority," it said.

The state department alert, a re-issuance of an earlier advisory not set to have expired until late December, warned US citizens to the threat of terrorist attacks throughout East Africa and a surge in piracy along the coast of lawless Somalia.

Although the language was nearly identical to that in earlier warnings - advising Americans that al-Qaeda followers and other extremists are active in East Africa - it added commercial shipping to the list of potential terrorist targets.

"Terrorist actions may include suicide operations, bombings, kidnappings or targeting maritime vessels," it said, adding that US citizens should review "carefully" any plans to travel to East Africa.

East Africa has been the site of several al-Qaeda-linked terrorist attacks over the past seven years, including the near simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998.

Then in November 2002, al-Qaeda-affiliated attackers bombed an Israeli-owned resort hotel near the Kenyan port city of Mombasa and unsuccessfully attempted to shoot down an Israeli airliner there with rockets on the same day.

- AFP