Eastleigh - One person was wounded as a huge blast shook the predominantly Somali neighbourhood of Eastleigh in Nairobi on Sunday evening, police said.
“There has been an explosion in the area. We do not have any more details currently about the nature of the explosion,” area police chief Moses Nyakwama confirmed the incident to media.
Witnesses say there were at least three separate blasts and that the explosions occurred near a bar. The Kenya Red Cross, in a statement said that there had been “at least three separate grenade attacks” and that the grenades had been thrown from a speeding vehicle.
The blasts follow a recent grenade attack outside a mosque that killed at least five people as well as wounding a member of parliament.
A recent roadside bomb in Eastleigh also killed one person and wounded several others. And last month, a bomb on a bus killed nine people.
There have been a string of attacks, often blamed on Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militants, since Kenya invaded Somalia last year.
KDF troops, now integrated into an African Union force, seized the Shabaab bastion of Kismayu in September, a key southern Somali port. This led to warnings of retaliation from both the insurgents and their Kenyan supporters.
But Al-Shabaab have denied involvement in previous similar bombings.
Violence in Kenya – ranging from attacks blamed on Islamists, inter-communal clashes and a police crackdown on a coastal separatist movement – have raised concerns over security ahead of elections due in March 2013.
Five years ago, elections descended into deadly post-poll killings that shattered Kenya’s image as a beacon of regional stability.
Last month, riots broke out in the Eastleigh district of Nairobi after the bombing of a bus, with running street battles between demonstrators and the police.
- AFP