Some witnesses say that a gunfight ensued, others that a hand-grenade was hurled at the embassy's guards. Whatever, moments later, the van's cargo of 800kg of TNT exploded, gouging a deep crater in the ground, setting fire to the asphalt and propelling the vehicle 10m into the air, where it remained stuck to the side of the embassy in a cloud of black smoke and flame. The force of the explosion was so intense that it was felt over 10km away. In the embassy itself - the intended terrorists' target - some forty people perished (twelve of them Americans) despite the reinforced concrete walls. The brunt of the blast, however, was borne by the adjacent four-storey Ufundi Cooperative House, a commercial building that also housed a secretarial and computer college. It was reduced to a mound of burning rubble. Next to it, the 22-storey Cooperative Bank Building skyscraper had black smoke pouring out from its shattered windows. Altogether, some forty buildings within a 150-metre radius were seriously damaged by the blast. In the packed streets below, thousands of people were showered with flying glass and masonry, as were the buses and cars that were snared up at the roundabout. In their panic, many fled the city on any transport they could find, believing that World War III had started, or that a coup was underway. But many more, even some of the injured, gathered their wits and started to help with the rescue operation.

A few minutes later, a second car bomb exploded outside the US Embassy in Tanzania's capital, Dar es Salaam, killing eleven people. In Kenya, the final toll stood at 263 dead and over 5000 injured, almost all of them Kenyans. Sixty people lost their eyesight, many more were partially blinded, and the material damage was estimated at around $500 million. The Americans were quick to blame Osama bin Laden for the attack, and promptly retaliated by bombing a suspected chemical weapons factory in Sudan and bin Laden's terrorist training base in Afghanistan. The country was plunged into confusion, mourning and grief: why had the terrorists chosen Kenya, which had no quarrel with either the USA or Islam? The answer appears to have been a lethal combination of lax security both at the embassy and at the Tanzanian border (over which the explosives were apparently smuggled), the embassy's central and exposed location, the proximity of the international press corps in East Africa, the United States' covert activities in Sudan, and the fact that Nairobi had been America's second largest CIA and FBI base in Africa.

The mindless cruelty and barbarism of this act was symbolized by what happened to Rose Wanjiku, a tea-lady in one of the Ufundi House offices. After the building collapsed, she remained buried alive for five days as rescuers, including a special unit of Israeli soldiers, worked desperately around the clock in an effort to save her and others. She had communicated constantly with them from beneath the rubble, but died half a day before she was reached. The tragic futility of her struggle for life touched millions across the world, and in Kenya, the long-stemmed rose became the symbol of the bomb blast victims. The National Memorial Service held two weeks after the outrage included Hindu and Muslim speakers, and the papers were full of praise for all Kenyans, whatever their religion or tribe, for having helped rescue victims in the immediate aftermath.

The site of the explosion itself, now a memorial garden (daily 6am-6pm; Ksh20), has become a place of pilgrimage where, every day, individuals, groups and delegations pay their respects to the victims of the bomb whose names are recorded on a plaque which also expresses the hope that those who died in this tragic event may rest in the knowledge that "it has strengthened our resolve to work for a world in which man is able to live alongside each other in peace"