The morning of November 28, 2002, will not be forgotten among the locals in Kikambala, 15 miles north of Mombasa, and indeed among many Kenyans following the events that transpired on that day.
At 8.00 am, terrorists struck at the Paradise Beach Hotel in Kikambala after a two-pronged terrorist attack hit the Israeli-owned hotel but missed a plane belonging to Arkia Airlines.
According to police reports, a vehicle crashed through a barrier outside the hotel on the Kilifi-Mombasa highway and blew up, killing 17 people and injuring 80 others.
The then hotel owner, Yehuda Sulami, reported that one of the bombers jumped off and detonated a bomb in the lobby while the other two stayed with the vehicle as it exploded.
A previously unknown group calling itself the Army of Palestine, linked to the Al-Qaeda terror group, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a faxed statement.
After 19 years of trying to roar the establishment back to life with little success, the owner decided to throw in the towel in 2021 and put the hotel up for sale.
This was after the managers injected Ksh300 million into the hotel’s operations to try to woo back tourists, but memories of the deadly attack continued to haunt its success.
The asking price for the once elegant facility with a 340-bed capacity sitting on 20 acres in Kikambala, Kilifi County, and some 100 meters from the Indian Ocean was pegged at Ksh800 million.
According to Sulami, the effects of the pandemic on the economic situation further compounded the challenges for the hotel effectively necessitating the sale.
For the locals, the story is not any different as memories of the horrific attack are still as vivid as the scars that some of them still bear.
In a 2020 interview with The Standard, Mercy Neema Mwagambo indicated that she together with 13 other victims of the attack and their families converge at the deserted hotel to pray for the souls of their departed relatives.
As the locals and, indeed Kenyans mark 20 years since the horrific attack, the victims are yet to receive any form of compensation from the government.
Source: kENYANS.CO.KE
