Death toll from Nairobi bus blast rises to 6: police

NAIROBI - The death toll from a blast on board a bus in Nairobi rose to six on Sunday after two gravely wounded people succumbed to their injuries overnight, police said.

Nairobi police chief Benson Kibue said a suspect was being questioned over the attack, which occurred Saturday on board a 32-seat vehicle coming from the capital's Eastleigh neighbourhood heavily populated by Somalis.

"We lost two of the victims in hospital where about 30 others are still admitted," Kibue said. "We now have six people dead out of that incident."

He said officers were still investigating the attack. "We have one suspect who was arrested soon after the incident. He is assisting us in the investigations."

Police were trying to determine whether the explosion was caused by a grenade or an improvised bomb and whether it was placed in the bus or carried by a passenger. The blast hit several cars near the bus, killing at least one of the motorists, according to witnesses.

It was the fourth attack during a week in which Kenya marked its 50th anniversary of independence from Britain, leaving a total of 15 people dead since Tuesday.

No links have as yet been established between the attacks, none of which has been claimed by any group.

Suspicion for some of them, though, has focused on Kenya's two-year military intervention in neighbouring Somalia to oust Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents.

The Shebab claimed the brutal September assault on Nairobi's upmarket Westgate mall in which at least 67 people died in a four-day siege of the shopping centre popular with foreigners.

Homegrown groups including the Islamist Al-Hijra group, a radical organisation formerly known as the Muslim Youth Center, operate on Kenya's coast and have been linked to the Shebab.

Late Friday at least one person was killed and three others seriously wounded when twin explosions rocked the Kenyan town of Wajir near the Somalia border, said police, indicating it was likely the work of Shebab insurgents or their sympathisers.

Also near the troubled border with Somalia, gunmen on Tuesday killed eight Kenyans including five policemen in an ambush.

And on Thursday, the very day Kenyans celebrated a half-century as an independent nation, attackers hurled a grenade at British tourists but it failed to explode - a rare attack specifically targeting foreign visitors who are key to the economy.