Gar W. Lipow quoted from the LA Times: > [All caps added by me] RESCUE EFFORTS, CONDUCTED SEVERAL YARDS APART, >HAVE BEEN SEPARATED BY ARMED U.S. SOLDIERS. KENYAN POLICE HAVE NOT >BEEN ALLOWED TO SET FOOT ON EMBASSY PROPERTY. MANY OF THE EMBASSY'S >INJURED WERE FLOWN TO HOSPITALS IN SOUTH AFRICA, THE BEST ON THE >CONTINENT, WHILE ORDINARY KENYANS COMPETED FOR BEEDS IN CROWDED >NAIROBI HOSPITALS. FINANCIAL TIMES - MONDAY AUGUST 10 1998 KENYA: Rescue teams turn on US marines By Michela Wrong in Nairobi "The Americans have behaved like assholes from day one," snorted the ambulance worker. His scathing comment summarised the feelings of many of those standing in the cold, waiting to see whether microphones and sniffer dogs provided by Israel would yield further signs of life below the concrete and metal. In the three days since a massive bomb ripped through Nairobi's city centre, heavily armed marines working with grim efficiency have cordoned off the shattered US embassy building behind a screen of barbed wire and grey sheeting. But by last night their failure to join the frantic excavation efforts atop the huge pile of rubble once known as Ufundi House had triggered amazement and fury among exhausted rescue workers. After a French army civil defence unit had arrived to reinforce the Israeli-led operation, a Kenyan police captain commented sarcastically: "The French are here, the Israelis are here, the Red Cross are helping and the Hindis are giving us food. Where are our American brothers?" Situated behind the embassy, the seven-storey building housing insurance offices and a secretarial college took the main brunt of Friday morning's blast. While the embassy remained standing, the old block simply folded. Until Saturday night the calls of victims buried under the debris could still be heard. But despite growing evidence that the collapsed Ufundi House, rather than the legation, would eventually give up the greatest number of bodies, US marines remained behind their self-appointed perimeter, warning away outsiders attempting to enter the document-strewn premises. "I went into the embassy soon after the blast to pull a victim out and a marine pulled a gun on me and shouted at me to back off," said David Tredrea, a trauma specialist. "Since then I don't believe a single one of them has helped in excavation on Ufundi House." Other rescue workers complained that in the hours following the blast, when passers-by scrabbled with their hands at the wreckage, US marines brushed away requests for shovels and digging tools. "People were asking for a drill so that we could get some air to the people we could hear inside. But they refused," said a Red Cross worker. A US embassy spokesman, William Barr, said the criticisms were unfair, given that overwhelmed US officials were still trying to locate scores of missing employees and establish how many had died inside the embassy itself. "We don't have a whole load of people on the ground as it is," he said. Prudence Bushnell, ambassador, acknowledged there might have been "some misunderstanding", but stressed the marines were trying to protect a site that could yield vital clues to FBI investigators. "You have to cordon off in order to maintain the evidence," she said. "It looks as though we're trying to keep people out, but we're trying to keep the site intact. It is in everybody's interest to find out who is behind the evil." More than 300 US investigators, medical personnel and rescue specialists are heading for Nairobi with equipment and medical supplies. But according to members of the Israeli team - veterans of earthquakes and suicide bombings who took over excavation operations at the weekend - the chances of finding survivors become virtually nil after the first 72 hours. By yesterday good news had become thin on the ground. An injured man was pulled from Ufundi House still alive on Saturday after 36 hours below the debris, and there was a flurry of excitement yesterday when a caretaker's wife and her 13-year-old son walked dazed from the still-standing Co-operative Bank House. Scores of US personnel will continue to fly into Nairobi with expertise and equipment in the coming hours. But the time for miracles has probably already drawn to a close. For disillusioned residents, the mass arrival of US personnel will smack more of a Washington exercise aimed at reassuring worried voters back home than one aimed at saving Kenyan lives.
