Kenyan farmer says he talked to suicide bombers.(Chicago Tribune)

KIKAMBALA, Kenya _ Just minutes before the Israeli-owned Paradise hotel exploded in flames, a chocolate-colored sport utility vehicle carrying two Arab men turned off the dirt road that runs past the hotel and parked at the edge of Khamis Haro's cornfield.

The farmer's 13-year-old daughter, Sophia, spotted the unexpected visitors first, and when her father ventured out to investigate, he found an unusual scene: a beefy middle-aged driver, silent and staring, at the wheel, a nervous younger passenger with darting eyes seated beside him, and a dashboard strewn with cellular phones.

"I asked, `How can I help?'" Haro remembered Sunday, at his thatched mud-daub house just a quarter-mile past the gutted hotel. The Mitsubishi Pajero's passenger, who had momentarily rolled down the car's tinted windows, told him in Arab-accented Swahili that they were just waiting for a friend coming from the direction of the hotel, and that in a few moments they would be moving on. The driver never spoke.

Haro stuck a hand in the car, briefly shook hands with both men, stealing a glance into the empty back seat, and then walked back to his house. Minutes later he saw the car back up and, oddly, turn back toward the hotel.

Then came the explosion.

On Sunday, the last man to talk with and get a good look at the suicide bombers who struck last week disputed suggestions by U.S. officials that the bombers might be Somali Islamic extremists.

The attackers "couldn't be Somali," Haro said. "The Swahili of Somalia I know."