KENYA: DEATH TOLL IN BUS BOMBING STANDS AT 27 AS POLICE QUESTION SEVERAL PEOPLE IN ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH MOTIVE.

Record ID: 358661

  • Title: KENYA: DEATH TOLL IN BUS BOMBING STANDS AT 27 AS POLICE QUESTION SEVERAL PEOPLE IN ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH MOTIVE.
  • Date: 3rd March 1975
  • Summary: 1. GV Wrecked bus with debris and investigators (3 shots) 0.11 2. GV PAN Ambulance leaving scene of explosion and crowd in street 0.18 3. SV Sign "Kenyatta National Hospital" 0.21 4. SV INT Nurses and doctors attending injured in hospital (3 shots) 0.32 5. SCU Injured boys and other patients (4 shots) 0.50 6. SV Dead body on trolle
  • Embargoed: 18th March 1975 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NAIROBI, KENYA
  • Country: Kenya
  • Reuters ID: LVA95MB8VTAW086715U6QBT4J518
  • Story Text: Police in Kenya are still trying to establish the motive for a bomb explosion that wrecked a bus, killing 27 and injuring 90 others in Nairobi on Saturday night (1 March).

    Several persons are being questioned -- including two men who were detained on the border with Tanzania 40 minutes before the explosion -- but so far no charges have been laid.

    The bus, which was bound for Mombasa, was still standing in the Nairobi terminus when the bomb exploded -- apparently set off when the driver started the engine.

    The blast almost severed the bus toward the rear and sprayed lethal strips of metal over a wide radius.

    Seventeen people died immediately and 10 later in hospital. Thirty-five of the injured were in a serious condition. Most of the passengers were said to have been women and children.

    The terminus area was immediately sealed off by police as Army bomb experts began to comb the debris for traces of the explosive device.

    The blast was so powerful it was heard half a mile away, and for some time afterward there was panic as people stampeded away from the scene.

    The explosion was the third in Nairobi in the past two weeks -- but the first to claim a life.

    Just before the blast the police received an anonymous telephone cell that a bomb was planted in a city cinema. As police rushed to the cinema, the bus bomb went off.
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