Two US military fire experts have arrived in Kenya to assist in investigations of the fire at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the State Department said on Thursday.
The US is also providing immigration equipment to help restore regular international service at JKIA, a State Department spokeswoman told theNation.
In addition, personnel from the US embassy in Nairobi are on the scene to assist Kenyan authorities with preliminary investigations into the causes of the fire.
The State Department had no comment on reports that FBI agents are also taking part in the investigations.
On Thursday, detectives from the American FBI and Israeli Mossad joined investigations into the fire which destroyed the international arrivals section of Kenya’s main airport.
Their involvement suggests that investigators are keen to confirm or eliminate the theory that terrorism could have been responsible for the inferno that temporarily shut the airport and caused massive disruptions to air travel to and from various destinations in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.
Another line being pursued by investigators is whether internal sabotage could have been the cause of the fire.
Questions were raised about the slow response by workers when the fire started. Witnesses said they saw smoke followed by a small fire which could have easily been extinguished had the response been faster.
A security official told the Nation that the international interest was huge because the fire occurred on the 15th anniversary of the August 7, 1998, twin terrorist bombings on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam.-nation.co.ke
