Yonatan Zunger (zunger) wrote,
Yonatan Zunger
zunger

Follow-up to yesterday...

Well, it looks like the attack threatened yesterday happened - but mercifully didn't go off as planned. Details here. The big one wasn't the car bomb at the hotel, but notice a couple of other things:


  • Two Stinger missiles (shoulder-mounted heat-seekers) were fired at a B757 as it was taking off from Mombasa airport. This would have been the first successful destruction of a passenger aircraft, not from aboard the craft but from the ground.
  • There are also rumors (debka, so take with some grain of salt) that aircraft strafed the hotel building in Kenya which was bombed.
  • There were four major, synchronized attacks: The aircraft strike, the Kenya bombing, the attack at the polling place in Israel, and a nearby major car bomb. (Which failed to detonate) Multiple widely separated, synchronized attacks are a classic al Qaeda calling card. (cf. Sept. 11, or the embassy bombings a few years ago)


So yes, sometimes it pays to be paranoid. One interesting point of analysis from debka: "The Mombasa attacks like the Bali bombing targeted exotic tourist spots frequented by Western vacationers - focusing on Australians in the first and Israelis in the second. "
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  • 7 comments

jephly

November 28 2002, 12:02:39 UTC 13 years ago

From the New York Times article, I gathered that the Kenya attacks (the missile attack and the hotel bombing) are considered the work of al Qaeda, while the shooting and attempted car bomb in Israel are considered the work of Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a Palestinian group.

I'm not sure there's any evidence of connection between the two. It's both an election day in Israel and Thanksgiving, so it's not a huge coincidence that they happened the same day.

Thanksgiving...

jholloway

November 28 2002, 12:51:18 UTC 13 years ago

is it celebrated in Australia or Israel?

I'm not really sure this is connected.

Re: Thanksgiving...

zunger

November 28 2002, 13:56:06 UTC 13 years ago

I don't think Thanksgiving had anything to do with it; the sync dates for these things tend to be chosen by the attacker's logic, not the defender's. My best guess is that the Kenya attacks were purely al Qaeda (via some new splinter group) and the Israeli attacks were the al Aqsa group, but that al Qaeda people made some effort to sync with them for maximum attention.