Multiple deaths, dozens injured in Nairobi bus attack

A suspected grenade attack on a minibus in Kenya's capital on Saturday killed six people near a Somali-dominated area of the city, police said. Four people were killed instantly at the site, two victims died from their wounds overnight and approximately 30 were wounded. The incident is the latest in a string of unclaimed attacks as the country marks 50 years of independence.

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

Kibue said a suspect was being questioned over the attack on the 32-seat vehicle Saturday, which came from the Eastleigh neighborhood, dubbed "Little Mogadishu" because it is mainly populated by Somali immigrants and Kenyans of Somali origin.

"We have one suspect who was arrested soon after the incident. He is assisting us in the investigations," Kibue said.

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

On Sunday the situation was calm in Eastleigh after police late Saturday dispersed some rioters in the street where the blast took place. Police forces were not particularly visible in the area, nor in the rest of the Kenyan capital.

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.

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

Also near the troubled 450-mile border with Somalia, gunmen on Tuesday killed eight Kenyans including five policemen in an ambush. Another policeman is missing following the attack.

And on Thursday, the day Kenyans celebrated a half-century as an independent nation, attackers hurled a grenade, which failed to explode, at a minibus carrying British tourists in Mombasa, a predominantly Muslim city.

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 neighboring Somalia to oust Al-Shebab insurgents, who are linked to Al-Qaeda.

Al-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 center popular with foreigners. That attack was the second deadliest after the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya in 1998, which left 213 people dead.

Al Jazeera and wire services