These 3 articles/posts tell a sad story: Video captures horror
Saturday, November 30, 2002
canoe.ca
By AP
JERUSALEM -- The video footage shows a family weaving its way through the gardens of the Paradise Hotel and walking into their hotel room.
Suddenly, an explosion shakes the walls and sends them shrieking and running outside.
Around a corner, the hand-held video camera still running, the family films a fireball that has engulfed the thatched roofs of the Israeli-owned Paradise and sends flames and black smoke into the air behind a life-sized statue of an elephant with his trunk raised high.
"What's happened? What a disaster! A catastrophe!" a man wails in Hebrew.
"What's happened?" he asks someone in English.
"I don't know!" someone else says.
The images were broadcast last night on Israeli television, hours after Israeli air force planes brought home the Israeli dead and wounded from the attack Thursday on the seaside resort north of Mombasa, Kenya. The family that filmed it was identified only by the last name Shapira.
The planes also brought home about 300 Israeli tourists and 138 people who were sent to Kenya to help with the recovery effort. The team included medical staff, rescue units, police forensic experts and Foreign Ministry officials.
Three Israelis and 10 Kenyans, as well as three suicide bombers, were killed.
The Israeli dead were identified as brothers Noy and Dvir Anter, ages 12 and 13, from the Jewish settlement Ariel, and Albert Dehaville, a 60-year-old tour guide from the central Israeli town of Raanana.
The Israelis were on a package tour. Many hoped to take a drive through safari wilderness, snorkel along coral reefs and visit a village of the Masai tribe.
"It was a giant explosion. I saw a lot of people injured, covered with blood," said Mirah Basus, 28, who lives near the Israeli port city of Haifa and was among those who returned home to Israel.
Other witnesses said they saw a green four-wheel-drive vehicle smash through the main gate to the hotel compound and race down a hill, stopping in front of the lobby.
Some of the witnesses said there were three men in the car. One ran into the lobby and blew himself up, while the others were in the vehicle when it exploded.
The lobby was engulfed in fire and buried in rubble. Thatched huts next to the building glowed with fire and were quickly burned black. The sound of screaming filled the hotel. |
