On 31 December 1980, New Year's Eve, a bomb exploded in The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. It partially destroyed the hotel, killing 20 people and wounding another 87.

The owner of the hotel was a prominent member of the local Jewish community, and it has been suggested that the attack was in retaliation for Kenya providing support to rescue the Israeli hostages in Uganda during Operation Entebbe four years earlier. Among the dead were at least four Kenyans, two Americans, two British children, a Danish employee of KLM, a Frenchman, and a Belgian child. The bomber was said by the Kenyan government to be a Moroccan with a Maltese passport named Qaddura Mohammed Abd Al-Hamid, identified as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who departed on a flight to Saudi Arabia on the day of the bombing.

1980 Nairobi hotel bombing

References

1980 murders in Kenya

1980 hotel bombing

Antisemitic attacks and incidents

Antisemitism in Africa

Attacks during the New Year celebrations

Attacks on hotels in Africa

Hotel bombings

1980 crimes

December 1980 events

Improvised explosive device bombings in 1980

1980 hotel bombing

Mass murder in 1980

1980 hotel bombing

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine attacks

Terrorist incidents in Africa in 1980

Terrorist incidents in Kenya in the 1980s

1980 hotel bombing

20th-century mass murder in Africa

1980 Nairobi hotel bombing