Kenyan farmer speaks with suicide bomber

MOMBASA, Kenya -- A Kenyan farmer said he spoke with suicide bombers moments before they blew up an Israeli-owned hotel here.\nKhamis Haro Deche, 39, a subsistence farmer and fisherman, lives about a half mile from the Paradise Hotel, where at least 15 people were killed in the attack last Thursday.\n"These are not good people. I shook hands with fire. I did not know. If you shake hands with a fire, you will be burned," the farmer said Sunday.\nPolice have confirmed nine Kenyans and three Israelis were killed; the hotel's Kenyan assistant manager is also believed dead. It was not clear whether two or three suicide bombers carried out the attack, Deputy Police Commissioner William Langat said Monday.\nMinutes before the blast, two Strela missiles narrowly missed an Israeli charter plane departing from Mombasa's airport.\nLangat said police were holding six Pakistanis and four Somalis picked up in a boat at Mombasa's port but had no firm evidence linking them to the attacks. Langat said the Pakistanis had not been extensively questioned because police do not have an Urdu translator.\nMir Mohammed, a Pakistani who was watching the 50-foot wooden vessel, told The Associated Press there had been only three Somalis aboard. Langat refused to comment about the number of Somalis on the boat.\nDeche said that shortly after 8 a.m. Thursday, a brown Mitsubishi Pajero with tinted windows and a red stripe pulled into his yard. He approached the car and saw two men whom he described as Arabs -- a slight young man with a nervous manner in the passenger seat and an older driver with a stockier build.\nHe leaned inside the vehicle to shake hands with both men, and saw no other people in the car. He saw several cellular phones on the dashboard.\nThe passenger spoke in Arabic-accented Kiswahili and told Deche they were waiting for a friend.\nInitial reports spoke of three men in the suicide vehicle, one of whom jumped out and blew himself up in the hotel lobby after the car had crashed through the gate. The hotel is about 12 miles north of Mombasa.\nLangat said police have spoken to seven witnesses who think they saw the brown car; some say they saw three men in the vehicle, but the most credible witnesses, Deche and a hotel security guard, said there were only two. No remains of the suicide bombers have been found, and police have not been able to identify the attackers.\nDeche said he was suspicious of the men because there had been thefts in the area, so he noted the car's license plate. The men drove away in the direction of the hotel, and a few minutes later an explosion shook his house, Deche said. Kenyan police and some "white men" who questioned him a day later told him the men were suspects in the bombing.\nWithin the scorched remains of the Paradise Hotel, Kenyan bomb specialists said parts of the vehicle used to carry out the attack were found up to 2,800 feet from the site.\nInvestigators also said they found parts of two gas welding cylinders, which they suspect were fastened to the vehicle to create a bigger explosion.\nKenyan police said Israeli authorities want to take the vehicle parts and the launchers and missile casings found near the airport back to Israel. Kenyan officials insist the evidence must remain in the East African nation, saying it is their responsibility to handle it.\nThe issue of Kenya's ability to carry out the investigation was raised by Sen. Robert Graham of Florida, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.\nGraham told "Fox News Sunday" that Kenya's "capability to do comprehensive investigation is limited. So therefore, I imagine that it will be primarily U.S. and Israeli intelligence officers who will be trying to unravel what happened in Kenya last week."\nA U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said initial suspicion centered on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, a Somali Islamic group that was put on a list of international terrorist organizations after the Sept. 11 attacks.