KENYA TERRORIST ATTACKS Israeli victims of blast arrive home

Rockets didn't hit an Israeli plane but came so close that passengers felt a jolt.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
JERUSALEM -- Ambulances sped down an airport tarmac today to retrieve wounded tourists evacuated from the scene of a fiery suicide bombing at a seaside hotel in Kenya.
The camouflage air force planes carried 21 of the injured along with dozens of other tourists and the three Israelis killed in the suicide bombing attack at the Paradise Hotel resort near Mombasa, Kenya.
Relatives wept as the coffins of the three Israelis were unloaded.
The dead were identified as brothers Noy and Dvir Anter, ages 12 and 14, from the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel, and Albert Dehaville, a 60-year-old tour guide from the central Israel town of Raanana.
The attacks
Three suicide bombers blew themselves up Thursday at the Israeli-owned hotel near the Kenyan port city, killing 13 others.
Minutes earlier, two missiles streaked past a Boeing 757 Israeli charter aircraft owned by Arkia Airlines as it left the Mombasa airport bound for Tel Aviv carrying 261 passengers, including many tourists who had just checked out of the hotel.
The rockets came so close that passengers felt a slight jolt.
The pilot, Rafi Marek, said he first thought the plane hit a bird. The plane was not struck, and no one was injured.
The Israelis came on a package tour, hoping to take a drive through safari wilderness, snorkel along coral reefs and visit a village of the Masai tribe.
Witness accounts
Early Thursday, a new tour group was checking in at the 160-bed hotel. Most had taken their keys and gone to their rooms. Some were eating breakfast when they heard the deafening blast.
"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.
The lobby was engulfed in fire and buried in rubble. Thatched huts next to the building glowed with fire and quickly burned. The sound of screaming filled the hotel, witnesses said.
"Everything was burning. I thought my sisters were inside the fire," said a red-eyed Ayelet Rubabshi, 15, wrapped in a blanket at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital. Fleeing with others from the ruined lobby to the beach, she found her two sisters and parents.
Kenyan soldiers whisked them off to another hotel, where they waited for the flight to Israel.
Doctors in Jerusalem treated family members for scrapes and minor burns. A Kenyan woman with severe burns also will be flown to Israel later today for treatment, said Dr. Yuval Weiss at Hadassah Hospital.
The attacks Thursday came about five minutes apart, and the apparent coordination recalled the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania carried out by Al-Qaida in 1998. Kenyan, Israeli and U.S. investigators were looking for an Al-Qaida link in Thursday's assaults, although a previously unknown organization, the Army of Palestine, claimed responsibility in a fax sent from Lebanon.
Up for questioning
Kenyan police said they picked up 12 people for questioning about the blast and the attempted attack on the Israeli airliner.
At least one of those being questioned had an American passport and gave a Florida address, said Ben Wafula, the manager of the hotel where the woman and an unidentified man were staying when detained.
The American woman, whom a police source identified as Alice Kalhammer, and the unidentified man were detained as they checked out of the Le Soleil Beach Club about 90 minutes after the attacks, Wafula said.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Peter Claussen confirmed that the woman -- whom he declined to name -- was an American citizen. He said the man, thought to be her husband, was a Spanish national with resident status in the United States.
However, sources said police did not think the two were involved in the attacks, and they were expected to be released soon. The pair was detained after police told the hotel after the attacks to alert them if anyone tried to check out.
Spain's Foreign Ministry confirmed that a Spaniard living in the United States was being questioned, but it would not identify him or give any other details. Spanish consular officials are assisting the man, the ministry said.
In Israel, Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the events as a "terror attack against Israel" and warned that they represented "a serious escalation of international terrorism."
The U.S. State Department urged Americans in Kenya to exercise extra caution after the attacks. President Bush labeled the violence as terrorism.
The attacks, Bush said, "underscore the continuing willingness of those opposed to peace to commit horrible crimes. Those who seek peace must do everything in their power to dismantle the infrastructure of terror that makes such actions possible."