Kenyan Hoteliers Panic after US President’s Directive

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Hotel operators fear tourists may cancel their bookings due to US governments’ travel warnings, threatening a sector which is a leading foreign exchange earner and employs many Kenyans.

This comes after gunmen suspected to be from Somalia’s Islamist al Shabaab group provoked Kenya on Friday by kidnapping two foreign doctors working in the northern town of Kenya.

In the second such kidnapping in recent months, the gunmen abducted the two Cuban doctors in a road ambush at Banisa stage in Mandera town, some 1,135 kilometres from the capital Nairobi.

In the daring attack that was staged a few minutes after 9 am, the attackers shot dead one of the two police officers who were escorting the medical staff to their work station.

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The officers, one from the Administration Police and the other from Kenya Police, had picked up the health workers from their houses in a Mandera County government vehicle.

During the ambush, the armed assailants in two Toyota Probox first blocked the vehicle ferrying the medics to work. They then alighted and opened fire on the police officers, killing the AP instantly.

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The gunmen then bundled the two health workers into their cars and sped off into Somalia, where the al Qaeda-allied rebels are in control of large swathes of the south and centre.

Kenyans have gotten increasingly alarmed about Somalia’s chronic instability, which has spilt over its borders.

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The United States has named Kenya in a list of nearly three dozen countries where it warned its citizen’s risk being kidnapped across the globe.

As of Tuesday, the State Department’s travel advisories for 35 nations featured a “K” that signifies “the risks of kidnapping and hostage taking by criminal and terrorist actors around the world,” according to a statement. The department said that the use of a new indicator on its travel website was “part of our ongoing commitment to provide clear and comprehensive travel safety information to U.S. citizens so they can make informed travel decisions.”

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Nations branded with a “K” included “Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Russian Federation, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine (in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine), Venezuela, and Yemen.”

Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi are the only countries in the six-nation East African Community (EAC) bloc that have been spared the kidnapping risk indicator in assessing the safety of US travellers.

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