7 Dead, 29 Hurt in Kenya Bus Attack
Seven people were killed and many more wounded when an apparent explosive device was hurled at a bus in a predominantly Somali area of the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Sunday, police and the Red Cross said.
Nairobi police chief Moses Nyakwama said the blast occurred on a bus in the district of Eastleigh, where mainly Somalis or Kenyans of Somali origin live and which has been the target of other attacks in recent weeks.
"The information we have is that there were about 25 people in the bus. It looks like it is an improvised explosive device that was thrown in it," he said. "It occurred at a congested place so even people passing by got injured."
The Kenyan Red Cross said on its Twitter account that the death toll was now seven people while the number of wounded was 29.
The blast ripped open the bus, with the roof and sides torn off. The windows were shattered and some seats at the back of the vehicle ripped out.
The force of the blast also sent metal parts of the bus flying, and some were piercing into nearby vehicles and buildings.
Kenya has suffered a wave of grenade and gun attacks, often blamed on sympathizers of Somalia's Shebab Islamist insurgents, since its army went into Somalia last year to flush out the Shebab.
The Eastleigh area has often been a target of the violence.
On Wednesday, a suspected grenade attack in a supermarket in the district wounded one person, and two weeks earlier another explosive device went off, wounding two.
Earlier this month, attackers also hurled a grenade into a church in the northeastern town of Garissa, close to the Somali border, killing one policeman and wounding 14 people.
Kenyan troops, now integrated into an African Union force, seized the Shebab bastion of Kismayo in September, a key southern Somali port, prompting warnings of retaliation from both the insurgents and their Kenyan supporters.
Source: Agence France Presse
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