Tuugnimadooda has no boundaries

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Kiinyaati ninkii yaqaano ayaa yaqaano. Read on.

 

Banks looted during Kenya airport fire

 

Officials in Kenya investigating the massive airport fire that gutted the arrival hall at Nairobi's main airport said today that first responders looted electronics, a bank and an ATM during and after the blaze.

 

The officials said first responders stole electronics and money from an ATM. Another official said that police guarding the site overnight attempted to a take a safe from a bank in the burned-out arrivals hall, which also houses several foreign currency exchange shops.

 

All four officials who described the alleged looting are close to the investigation. They insisted on anonymity because they weren't authorized to share the information before the investigation is complete.

 

The fire-fighting response to yesterday's inferno was criticized as slow and inadequate, but the officials could not definitely say the looting was carried out by firefighters. One official said there was now behind-the-scenes finger pointing taking place between the police, fire department and army. Another official said specialised police units had attempted to steal the safe overnight.

 

The criminal investigations policeman for the airport, Joseph Ngisa, said he hasn't received formal complaints of theft and that police are waiting for affected institutions to report what they lost in the fire.

 

All public servants in Kenya, including police, firefighters and soldiers, are poorly paid and frequently accused of corruption. Police officers who guard the entrance to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport are well known in Nairobi for demanding bribes from taxi drivers and other vehicles with Kenyan drivers.

 

International flights, meanwhile, resumed Thursday as officials improvised immigration and luggage routines.

 

Kenyan officials, assisted by members of the FBI, investigated the cause of the fire. One of the security officials who spoke to AP said the investigation had ruled out terrorism and was now trying to determine if the fire was intentional or accidental.

 

Michael Kamau, the cabinet secretary for transport and infrastructure, said Kenyan officials were receiving assistance from international agencies "because we intend to carry out a full investigation on what happened yesterday." One of the officials who spoke to AP confirmed that members of the FBI were assisting.

 

Kamau said the design of the airport - constructed in the mid-1970s - made it challenging for firefighters to access certain areas with water hoses. Kamau said he was "satisfied" by the response of firefighters from private companies but did not mention the airport firefighters, who responded slowly and whose equipment wasn't fully functioning.

 

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is East Africa's largest aviation hub, and the fire disrupted air travel across the continent as the airport canceled all international flights yesterday. Many inbound flights were diverted to Tanzania and the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa. Domestic flights were being operated from the airport's cargo terminal.

 

Firefighters were desperately short of equipment Wednesday. The airport has fire trucks but some were not filled with water and personnel couldn't be found to drive others. At one point while battling the blaze men in government uniforms lined up to pass buckets of water to fight the fire.

 

No serious injuries were reported.

 

President Barack Obama called Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta to offer US support. The fire broke out on the 15th anniversary of US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people in total, mostly Kenyans, but also a dozen Americans.

 

Nairobi is the capital of East Africa's largest economy, but public-sector services such as police and fire departments are hobbled by small budgets, corrupt money managers and outdated equipment or an absence of equipment.

Xigasho

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Seven officers held over looting at JKIA

 

Seven police officers have been arrested for looting when fire broke out at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as the mystery surrounding four passengers awaiting deportation deepened on Friday.

 

The seven instructors, including an inspector of police from the General Service Unit, may be arraigned in court on Monday over the looting on Wednesday morning.

 

The men were supervising the course officers who had been brought in to offer reinforcement but items allegedly stolen from the building that was under fire were found in their possession.

 

Alcohol stolen

 

They include cash and alcohol from some of the destroyed shops. The Inspector of Police, Mr David Kimaiyo, on Friday said he had not been properly briefed but warned that stern action would be taken against any officer found to have been involved.

 

This happened as police focused their investigations on four passengers who were awaiting deportation when the fire broke out but cannot be traced.

 

Of particular concern to the detectives was the whereabouts of an illegal immigrant who had been denied access into the country. The man, of Somali descent, was being held at the immigration’s Prohibited Immigrants Room at the airport when the fire broke out.

 

Mr Joseph Mathinji Muriithi, the senior immigration officer in charge of the night shift, told detectives that when he was alerted of the fire, he went and ordered the transfer of the passenger to the JKIA police station.

 

In his statement, he did not indicate the passenger’s name, only saying he was of Somali origin. Mr Muriithi also said that he never took the prisoner to the police station himself but asked a junior officer to do it.

 

However, when the detectives checked at the station, the man was not there and there were no police records indicating that he had been booked in custody.

 

Investigators yesterday collected some samples at the scene of the fire including burnt items. They are trying to establish the nature of a substance that was seen oozing from the ceiling board shortly before the fire broke out.

 

Mr Muriithi on Thursday told detectives that when he went to the area where the smoke was coming from, he saw a sticky white liquid oozing from the ceiling board of the immigration offices.

 

There was speculation that this substance could be related to the fire outbreak.

 

The staff of Kenya Airways are also to be interrogated after investigators established that there was another fire at their kitchen, which is a few metres from the immigration offices.

 

The footage retrieved from Kenya Airways headquarters showed three women in KQ uniform in the kitchen cooking food just before the fire broke out at the same kitchen.

 

President Kenyatta yesterday seemed to rule out a terrorist attack as the cause of the fire.

 

“We can now confirm that there was no element of a terror incident in this fire. There is no evidence of an explosion or an improvised explosive device. This was a simple fire gone bad,” he said on Friday.

 

The President also warned that anyone found culpable, including for gross negligence, would be dealt with.

Daily Nation

[Alpha Blondy]

^ when you say ''Tuugnimadooda has no boundaries''.....can we infer you're speaking from a statistical viewpoint?