Kenyan Officials Blame al-Shabab for Deadly Attack

Kenyan officials say al-Shabab militants are responsible for a grenade attack at a busy bus station in the capital, Nairobi, killing at least six people and wounding scores of others. The explosions Saturday evening came hours after Kenya officially announced it joined African Union Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM.

Witnesses say people in a moving car hurled three grenades at the terminal in Nairobi. The targets were hundreds of commuters travelling to the countryside to spend the weekend. Three people died at the scene of the explosion and dozens were rushed to the Kenyatta National Hospital.

Dr. Simion Monda, the deputy director of clinical services at Kenyatta National Hospital, told reporters in Nairobi more than 40 patients were admitted. “Deaths, we have had two deaths as they were being attended to otherwise you remember when they came first they were three who brought in dead, two male and one female. And we have lost two here. That means the number of deaths we have received here is five," he said.

Twenty-seven-year-old Catherine Muturi, a vendor at the bus terminal, told VOA she heard a loud explosion and was hit by shrapnel. Muturi says she sustained injuries in her arm and stomach. She said she saw fire and a loud explosion. Some people died, she said, and so many people were injured. Others were running the explosion happened when I was at my business.

Twenty-one-year-old Andrew Wahome was nursing a head injury. He said he remembers little of what happened. "I was at the country bus at the main gate, he recalls, when I was there I didn’t know what was going on, I just found myself at the hospital. I came to know what exactly happened and the reason why I am here," he said.

This is the latest in a string of gun, bomb and grenade attacks that have killed dozens of people since Kenya sent troops into Somalia in October to fight al-Qaida-aligned al-Shabab militants.