<p>A grenade tore through a minibus in Nairobi’s Somali-dominated Eastleigh neighbourhood on Sunday, killing at least seven people in an attack highlighting the security risks Kenya faces because of its intervention in Somalia to fight Islamist militants.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Kenya has suffered a string of deadly attacks in its capital Nairobi, the southern port city of Mombasa as well as the eastern garrison town of Garissa over the past year.<br /><br />The attacks have been blamed on Somali militants and their sympathisers in retaliation for Kenya’s deployment of troops in neighbouring Somalia last year to drive out al-Qaeda-linked militants which Nairobi has blamed for attacks on its territory.<br /><br />“I saw bodies ripped apart,” said a Reuters photographer at the scene of the blast. He saw a crowd lifting five dead bodies wrapped in sacks onto the back of a police vehicle.<br /><br />The force of the explosion left only the charred skeleton of the minibus, the orange seats ripped apart. The windows of a nearby cafe were shattered and two other cars were damaged.<br /><br />Nairobi regional police commander Moses Ombati said the grenade had been thrown into the minibus, commonly referred to as matatus in Kenya.<br /><br />The Kenya Red Cross said on its Twitter account that seven people had been killed and 24 people had been taken to hospital.<br /><br />“I just heard a blast. I thought I’d hit something. The van was suddenly thrown upwards,” the matatu’s driver, Bernard Kibe, told reporters at the scene.</p>
<p>A grenade tore through a minibus in Nairobi’s Somali-dominated Eastleigh neighbourhood on Sunday, killing at least seven people in an attack highlighting the security risks Kenya faces because of its intervention in Somalia to fight Islamist militants.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Kenya has suffered a string of deadly attacks in its capital Nairobi, the southern port city of Mombasa as well as the eastern garrison town of Garissa over the past year.<br /><br />The attacks have been blamed on Somali militants and their sympathisers in retaliation for Kenya’s deployment of troops in neighbouring Somalia last year to drive out al-Qaeda-linked militants which Nairobi has blamed for attacks on its territory.<br /><br />“I saw bodies ripped apart,” said a Reuters photographer at the scene of the blast. He saw a crowd lifting five dead bodies wrapped in sacks onto the back of a police vehicle.<br /><br />The force of the explosion left only the charred skeleton of the minibus, the orange seats ripped apart. The windows of a nearby cafe were shattered and two other cars were damaged.<br /><br />Nairobi regional police commander Moses Ombati said the grenade had been thrown into the minibus, commonly referred to as matatus in Kenya.<br /><br />The Kenya Red Cross said on its Twitter account that seven people had been killed and 24 people had been taken to hospital.<br /><br />“I just heard a blast. I thought I’d hit something. The van was suddenly thrown upwards,” the matatu’s driver, Bernard Kibe, told reporters at the scene.</p>