This is being recorded barely an hour after the first reports started coming in of a car bomb explosionoutside an Israeli-owned hotel 27 kms from Mombasa in Kenya causing a large number of casualties,some of them reportedly fatal, and an abortive attempt to bring down a chartered Israeli plane carryingIsraeli tourists returning home from Mombasa by firing two missiles at it from the ground. The availabledetails are very sketchy and, hence, no definitive assessment is possible on who might have been responsible for what appears, as of now, to be co-ordinated terrorist strikes. Some tentative observationscan, however, be made.