Kerry commemorates with attack victims in Kenya

John Kerry has commemorated the victims of Kenya’s past and present attacks and offered American support in the fight against an increasingly diffuse but perhaps more dangerous threat emanating out of Somalia.

His trip to the East African country coincides with improving US-Kenyan ties and sets the stage for President Barack Obama’s visit this summer.

Kerry laid a wreath on Monday for the victims of the deadly 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Kenya and offered condolences to families and friends of the 148 people, mainly students, massacred at a Kenyan university last month.

The embassy attacks in Nairobi and the Tanzanian capital of Dar-es-Salaam killed 224 people, the work of a rising al-Qaeda just three years before the even deadlier September 11 attacks against the US homeland.

Kerry told an assembled group at the park that if the attackers intended to destroy relations between US citizens, Kenyans, and Tanzanians, they failed.

“They didn’t destroy anything that was worthwhile,” Kerry said. “The only place for al-Qaeda, al-Shabab, Boko Haram and Daesh is in the past.”