Britain extends travel warning on Kenyan coast to include Lamu.
Telegraph.co.uk - 2 hours ago
By Zoe Flood in Nairobi
3:18PM BST 12 Jul 2014
Updated travel advisory follows series of attacks on north Kenyan
coast. Tourists are advised to avoid the Lamu archipelago in Kenya
Photo: ALAMY
British tourists should avoid all but essential travel to Kenya's
popular tourist destination of Lamu and the surrounding area, the
Foreign Office said in an update to its travel advice.
More than 80 people have been killed in a series of attacks over the
past four weeks that have terrorised the population on the mainland
opposite the Lamu archipelago.
Al-Qaeda-linked militants al-Shabaab have claimed responsibility for
the attacks, saying they were carried out as revenge against Kenya's
military operations in Somalia.
Although hotels and houses catering to western tourists on the Lamu
archipelago have not been targeted, Britain's latest travel warning
against the Kenyan coast is likely to damage further the country's
vital tourism industry.
The updated advisory - which stresses "a high threat of terrorism" -
came just days after gunmen attacked another village in Lamu County,
torching houses and stealing weapons, food and medical suppliers.
http://www.google.ca/gwt/x?gl=CA&hl=en-CA&u=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/10963693/Britain-extends-travel-warning-on-Kenyan-coast-to-include-Lamu.html&source=s&q=kenya+travel+warning
"[Travel warnings] are simply a reflection, a very factual and very
objective reflection, of the security situation as we and our experts
see it," according to Michelle Bernier-Toth, managing director for the
US State Department's overseas citizens services.
She says decisions about whether to add a country to the warning list
are made through a "collaborative process" that is based on
information collected from embassies and consulates overseas, local
governments, the intelligence and security community, media reports,
and from "wherever we can get it."
And the governments of countries on the list typically hate it and
complain. For one thing, t
ravel warnings do not have an expiration date. Bernier-Toth says they
are only lifted when the US State Department determines that "the
security situation or the conditions that led to the warning no longer
exist."
These "Travel Warnings," which can be found at travel.state.gov, are
the strongest mechanism used by the State Department to discourage
travel to a country short of imposing an all-out ban.
The vast majority of these warnings fall in Africa and have caused
some nations to decry the long-standing US alert system.
Right now, according to the travel warnings issued by the State
Department, US citizens should "strongly consider not going" to more
than one third of Africa. This map shows the countries on the list in
recent years and the rise and fall of American travel to the
continent.
Credit: David Conrad
Kenya rebuked the United States and Britain earlier this summer for
issuing warnings about travel to the east African country. After the
alerts, tour operators cancelled all flights to Kenya's popular
coastal town of Mombasa until October and sent hundreds of
holidaymakers packing as a precaution.
The warnings and departures by tourists have caused considerable
damage to Kenya's tourism sector, one that President Uhuru Kenyatta
reportedly said is "on its knees" following the series of deadly
attacks by the Islamic militant group al-Shabab, based in Somalia.
Bernier-Toth says countries shouldn't blame the US State Department
warnings for declining tourism. "It's not the travel warning in and of
itself that has an impact," she says, "but the situation on the
ground."
Nevertheless, Kenya called the alert "unfriendly", saying it would
increase panic and play into the hands of al-Shabab, which claims it
is trying to cripple Kenya's economy. The recent travel warnings are a
vexing pattern for Kenya, which has found itself on the list every
June for more than 10 years.
Similarly, while al-Shabab hasn't launched a single attack in Burundi,
the mere fact that the group has threatened to launch an attack there
landed the tiny Central African nation on the list, along with more
dangerous nations, such as Somalia and the Central African Republic.
Here is a map that shows where the US says Americans are at greatest
risk in 2014, and another that shows where Americans have actually
been killed by terrorism over the last 10 years.
One spoiler alert: terrorist attacks have killed as many US citizens
in Texas as they have in all of Africa. Does that affect your travel
plans?
Credit: David Conrad
*In a previous version of this story, the infographic titled "Rise and
Fall of Travel to Africa by US Citizens" did not use a consistent
scale across the two rows. This has been corrected. Thank you to Thom
Stevenson for pointing this out!
http://www.google.ca/gwt/x?gl=CA&hl=en-CA&u=http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-07/us-travel-warnings-out-africa-more-strategy-summer-read&source=s&q=kenya+travel+warning
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