Grieving relatives of victims of the US embassy bombing in Nairobi attended scores of burials across Kenya yesterday, as Pakistan announced the arrest of a suspect.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry in Islamabad announced it had deported an Arab man to Kenya for questioning over his possible role in simultaneous car bomb attacks on two US African embassies on August 7th.
"The foreign office . . . has confirmed that a suspect involved in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had been arrested . . . immediately after his arrival from Nairobi on August 7," the statement said.
"The suspect, an Arab national by the name of Mohammad Sadik Howaida, was interrogated by our concerned agencies and on satisfaction about his involvement in these terrorist acts, he was sent back to Nairobi and handed over to the Kenyan authorities for appropriate action under their law," it said.
The statement did not say when the suspect was flown to Kenya or give any details of the arrest. A newspaper report said the suspect was heading towards Afghanistan when he was detained.
Kenyan police have made five arrests in connection with the bombing, but have given no details on the progress of their investigation.
Meanwhile, in accordance with tribal custom, the bodies of dozens of victims were transported to their rural areas for burial on their own homesteads at the weekend.
Large congregations attended church services in both Kenya and Tanzania where prayers were offered for the victims and their families.
At the Nairobi city mortuary, where most of the 247 bodies of victims of the Kenyan blast had been stored, relatives were provided with free coffins by the Kenyan government and received cash donations to cover the cost of transport to funeral sites.
Seventy bodies of victims of the Nairobi blast were still awaiting collection from the mortuary yesterday. But three of the victims, badly mutilated, were still unidentified.
Most of the 5,000 people - mainly Kenyans - who were injured in the blast have been allowed home after treatment, but over 200 were still in local hospitals, officials said. Many more were being treated as out-patients.
In Tanzania, where 10 people died in the blast which severely damaged the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, police said on Saturday they had released 12 of 14 foreign nationals held last week as investigations got under way.
The US began evacuating non-emergency staff from Albania yesterday after it temporarily closed its embassy following the twin bombings in Africa, a US embassy source said.
Around a dozen vehicles carrying embassy personnel headed for Rinas airport near Tirana shortly after mid-day, escorted by Albanian police cars and motorcycles, witnesses said.
A US embassy source would not disclose how many staff were leaving but said the US ambassador, Ms Marisa Lino, was staying in Albania.
The State Department on Friday ordered home all non-emergency personnel and the families of employees, saying the embassy might become the target of attack by Islamic extremists who have threatened the US.
Four Islamists were arrested in Albania and extradited to Egypt last month in operations widely reported by the Tirana press to have been conducted with the assistance of the CIA.
An Albanian official denied a report by the London-based Islamic Observation Centre (IOC) that another Egyptian Islamist militant had been arrested in Tirana on Thursday.
Speculation that the embassy bombings in Africa may have been staged to avenge the extraditions was prompted by a warning last week from Jihad, a banned militant Islamist group in Egypt.