- 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. "
November 29 2002, 00:19:26 UTC 13 years ago
btw. It's nice to "meet" you online. I'm in Biophysics at Harvard. I did my MSc in CS (with two Quantum Computing pioneers.) Some of us wonder if string theory will lead to a more powerful computing model. I'll be in your area in January...