Kenya bans Somalia flights after US terror warning

[General Duke]

Kenya bans Somalia flights after US terror warning

(AFP)

 

11 November 2006

 

NAIROBI - Kenya on Saturday ordered the suspension of all flights to and from neighboring Somalia for security reasons, after a US warning that Somali extremists are plotting suicide attacks in the country.

Amid deteriorating conditions in the lawless nation where the weak transitional government is girding for war with powerful Islamists, Kenyan authorities ordered a halt to air service beginning Monday.

 

‘Effective from Monday, all flights to Somalia are suspended until further notice,’ Kenya’s principal immigration officer J.K. Ndathi said in a letter addressed to immigration staff at all of Kenya’s airports.

 

The order affects scheduled six-days-a-week service from Nairobi to Mogadishu and three other Somali cities offered by two carriers -- Dallo and East Africa Express airlines -- as well as numerous cargo flights.

 

In addition, it requires charter airlines to get specific exemptions to the ban.

 

‘All charter flights to Somalia must get clearence one week before the flight, which must be accompanied by the passenger manifest, travel documents and reasons for travel,’ Ndathi said.

 

The letter, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, gave no explanation for the move, which comes as tensions within Somalia soar and Nairobi’s relations with the Islamist movement there become increasingly frosty.

 

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said security was the primary reason.

 

‘We have indefinitely suspended flights between Kenya and Somalia for security reasons,’ Mutua told AFP, declining to elaborate.

 

The step follows a US warning that radical Islamists had threatened suicide attacks in Kenya and Ethiopia, countries that support the transitional Somali government, and urged Americans in the nations to use ‘extreme caution.’

 

The Islamists have dismissed the alert but last weekend Kenyan authorities briefly detained several senior Islamists whose small plane landed at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport after being diverted by weather from its destination in Somalia.