Kenya's Kenyatta Says Queen Was 'a Towering Icon Of Selfless Service'

Nairobi, Sept 9 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 9th Sep, 2022 ) :Queen Elizabeth was "a towering icon of selfless service", Kenya's outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta said Friday, in a statement expressing his "deep sense of loss" at her passing.

"Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was a towering icon of selfless service to humanity and a key figurehead of not only the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations where Kenya is a distinguished member but the entire world," he said.

Kenyatta said he "received the sad news... with great sorrow and a deep sense of loss", noting the former British colony's close ties with the queen.

Elizabeth, then a princess, was on a visit to Kenya in February 1952 when she received news of her father's death while staying at the Treetops hotel, a remote game-watching lodge in the Aberdare forest.

Kenya was the first stop on the tour of the Commonwealth she had embarked on with her husband, Prince Philip, in place of her ill father.

It was during their night at the Treetops hotel that Elizabeth would become queen.

The royal visit -- and the legend to go with it -- made Treetops among the most famous hotels in the world.

Two decades after Kenya declared independence from Britain in 1963, the queen returned to the country on the invitation of then president Daniel arap Moi.