Hints Ahead Of Kenya Attack
Israeli intelligence had advance warning that terror groups were operating in Kenya but did not have information that they were planning to attack Israeli targets, an army intelligence chief said.
On Tuesday, Palestinian militant groups refused to condone last week's attacks in Mombasa, Kenya, and said they were not interested in extending their conflict with Israel outside the immediate region.
The chief of research in Israel's military intelligence, Brig. Gen. Yossi Kupperwasser, told a parliamentary committee Monday that Israel did not have specific information — like Germany and Australia did — that attacks were being planned in Mombasa, Knesset spokesman Giora Pordes said Tuesday.
Germany and Australia put out advisories in mid-November warning their citizens against visiting Mombasa, based on intelligence they had that terror groups were planning attacks on Western targets in the Kenyan port city.
Asked by a legislator whether Israel had similar information, Pordes quoted Kupperwasser as saying: "No, there was no concrete and exact information. There was general information, but not regarding Israeli targets, rather on the attempt to carry out an attack in Kenya. Israel was never mentioned."
Ten Kenyans, three Israelis and two or three suicide bombers were killed Thursday in an attack at the Paradise hotel near Mombasa. The hotel is owned by a British company, Paradise Mombasa Ltd., but hundreds of Israelis have bought time-share units there, according to Yigal Cohen, a Tel Aviv lawyer who handles sales in Israel.
Just minutes before the hotel bombing, two missiles were fired from shoulder-held launchers and narrowly missed an Israeli-owned Boeing 757 with 271 people onboard that had just taken off from Mombasa and was headed to Tel Aviv.
Danny Yatom, a former head of the Mossad, said that Israel receives so many warnings that most are not taken seriously.
"It's very, very hard … to relate to specific information unless it's very clear and defined and the source is reliable," Yatom told Israel Radio Tuesday. If Israel had more concrete information, it would have acted to prevent the attacks, Yatom said.
Kupperwasser told the parliamentary committee that since the terror attack in the Indonesian resort of Bali, which killed nearly 200 people in October, Israel has been flooded with intelligence information from all over the world.
A statement attributed to al Qaeda and posted on an Islamic Web site claimed responsibility Monday for the two attacks. In Washington, U.S. officials said they considered the claim credible.
American officials announced that two missile launchers recovered after the attack on the airliner are from the same production batch as one used by an al Qaeda operative who tried in May to down a U.S. military plane in Saudi Arabia.
As CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, even before the evidence of the missile launchers, U.S. officials were saying the near simultaneous attacks on two Israeli targets in Kenya bore all the trademarks of an al Qaeda operation, with striking similarities to the 1998 attacks on two American embassies in Africa.
Israel's army chief, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, warned this week that al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin-Laden, is sending instructions to Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Haaretz newspaper reported Tuesday.
Islamic Jihad spokesman Nafez Azaam said Tuesday his group's "ideology and strategy is based on fighting the occupation and liberating the Palestinian lands.
"We have no interest in transferring the battle to any field outside Palestine," he said by phone from Gaza.
Hamas spokesman Ismail Abu Shanab also said his group had "no interest in engaging in battle with anyone else outside the land of Palestine," he said.
Islamic Jihad and Hamas have taken responsibility for scores of deadly attacks on Israelis. Fearful of being equated with bin Laden's network, both groups condemned the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. But they have been silent following the attacks in Kenya.