KENYA: Explosion in a busy central Nairobi street kills at least one person and leaves more than 30 injured

Record ID: 361638

  • Title: KENYA: Explosion in a busy central Nairobi street kills at least one person and leaves more than 30 injured
  • Date: 11th June 2007
  • Summary: FORENSIC EXPERTS COLLECTING EVIDENCE POLICE COLLECTING BODY
  • Embargoed: 26th June 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVAABXY49KTN8WS9WZQTDHP99MLP
  • Story Text: An explosion in a busy central Nairobi street kills at least one person and leaves more than 30 injured. Police say it is too early to say if it was a suicide bombing.

    An apparent bomb blast in a Nairobi street on Monday (June 11) killed one person and injured dozens and left a severed leg hanging from a shattered window.
    Witnesses saw a man with a package running down the road just moments before the blast at around 8 a.m. local time (0500 GMT). Local KTN television, however, said a man carrying a grenade was killed when it exploded as he tried to board a bus going to Nairobi's international airport.
    The blast occurred during rush hour near the Ambassadeur hotel outside a restaurant in the city's packed central business district. It shattered shop windows and damaged a nearby bus.
    Some torn papers with English and Arabic script from the Koran were found at the scene, witnesses said, and anti-terrorism police arrived quickly.
    Witness Robert Nyagah described the carnage caused by the explosion.
    "After the blast, people just started screaming and running all over," Nyagah said.
    "At one point there was a lady who was I think at the centre of the whole thing she was blown off across the street, we went and assisted her, we went and covered her, her clothes had been torn off," he said.
    Baton-wielding police, some of them on horseback, pushed back a crowd of several thousand people milling round the scene.
    The blast came after weeks of violence by the Mungiki, notorious for beheading its enemies. More than 30 people were killed by police last week in raids on a Nairobi slum which is a stronghold of the gang, which has been calling for an uprising.
    Police Commissioner Hussein Ali berated media for speculation that the blast could have been caused by a suicide bomber and said it was too early to know the cause.
    "We will determine from the ground and from the officers from forensics who are on the ground here, the cause of the explosion. I do not want to speculate and tell you it is or it is not. We will give you the factual information based on the investigations that are emanating from the scene," he said.
    Although considered a relatively peaceful country in a volatile region, Kenya was hit by large bomb blasts in 1998 and 2002 that were blamed on al Qaeda.
    If an attack is confirmed, suspicion could fall on militant Islamists from neighbouring Somalia or members of the criminal Mungiki gang wreaking havoc in Kenya for the last month.
    Tribal and criminal violence traditionally flares ahead of elections, and a presidential poll is due in December.
    A bomb killed more than 200 people at the U.S. embassy in 1998 -- just a few blocks from Monday's blast -- and 15 at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa in 2002.
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