President Daniel arap Moi, speaking to crowds at the scene of yesterday's massive Nairobi blast, blamed Islamic fundamentalists for the outrage and another in the Tanzanian capital, Dar-es-Salaam.
He said the attacks were clearly aimed at citizens of the United States.
At least 70 people were killed and more than a thousand injured in the massive blast in the busy city centre of the Kenyan capital yesterday morning. The explosion, which is believed to have been caused by a car bomb, went off beside the US embassy at 10.35 a.m. local time (8.35 a.m. Irish time).
Minutes later a second bomb exploded at the US embassy in the Tanzanian capital, Dar-es-Salaam, killing six people and injuring 58. None were Americans though some were embassy employees.
At least eight American staff members of the embassy in Nairobi died in the explosion and another seven were missing. Among the injured were the US ambassador to Kenya, Ms Prudence Bushnell, and the Kenyan Minister for Trade, Mr Jospeh Kamotho, whom she was meeting in the embassy. Fifteen embassy staff were treated in hospital.
Most of the casualties from the Nairobi explosion were in two buildings beside the American embassy, an office block and a high-rise bank building. The office block collapsed, burying an unknown number of people in the rubble.
Passers-by joined rescue workers from the Red Cross in trying to pull survivors from the wreckage. Two buses passing the American embassy took the full blast of the explosion. Many passengers were killed or wounded by flying glass and shrapnel.
Nairobi hospitals immediately appealed for blood donors and national radio asked emergency services to rush to the area. International aid agencies joined local organisations in tending to the wounded and removing dead bodies from the rubble.
Kenyans flocked to donate blood, and President Moi later thanked the people for their willingness to help the injured in a time of national tragedy. Many of the dead were laid out in a pedestrian precinct behind the American embassy. The blood-spattered ground where they lay was covered with shards of glass and lumps of fallen masonry.
The windows of buildings for hundreds of yards around were blown out by the force of the blast. The Nairobi bomb appears to have gone off in a car-park beside the embassy.
One passer-by told The Irish Times he had seen a white car being blown high into the air when the bomb went off. The twisted remains of half-a-dozen incinerated vehicles littered the area beside the embassy.
An international Arabic daily in Cairo reported that it received a call late yesterday from an unknown Islamic group claiming responsibility for the two bomb attacks. "Elements of the organisation carried out the two operations simultaneously," the Al- Hayat newspaper quoted a caller as saying. The claim could not be independently substantiated.
It said the caller was speaking in an Arabic dialect which was not Egyptian, and that he said he was a spokesman for a group called "The Liberation Army of the Islamic Sanctuaries".