Deadly Kenya grenade attack hits children in church

One child has been killed and six critically hurt, the Red Cross says, in a grenade attack on a church's Sunday school in the Kenya capital, Nairobi.



The attacker targeted St Polycarp's church on Juja Road.


A police spokesman said they suspected sympathisers of Somalia's al-Shabab Islamist militants were to blame.


Kenyan troops are at present part of an African Union force that has forced al-Shabab from its last Somali urban stronghold of Kismayo.


The Daily Nation quoted local police as saying that a number of those hurt at the church were injured in a stampede after the attack.


The police spokesman, Charles Owino, told Reuters news agency: "We suspect this blast might have been carried out by sympathisers of al-Shabab.


The fact that Sunday's bombing has immediately been blamed on "Al-Shabab sympathisers" is hardly surprising, given events in Somalia in recent days.

The hand-grenade, thrown into a crowded public place, is becoming a grimly familiar tactic in Kenya. In the past six months, it has been used in bars in Mombasa, churches in Garissa near the Somali border, as well as churches and a bus station in Nairobi.



All of these attacks have initially been blamed on al-Shabab. But in at least some cases, subsequent reporting has suggested turf-wars between local gangs.



As Kenyan troops push al-Shabab out of its last Somali urban stronghold, Kismayo, there is nervousness about the possibility of a retaliation on Kenyan soil.



Many remember the bombings in Kampala in 2010, which killed 74 people, after Ugandan troops entered Somalia. Whatever the motive of Sunday's bombing, it is not on a comparable scale.

"These are the kicks of a dying horse since, of late, Kenyan police have arrested several suspects in connection with grenades."



Irene Wambui, who was in the church at the time of the attack, said: "We were just worshipping God in church when suddenly we heard an explosion and people started running for their lives.



"We came to realise that the explosion had injured some kids who were taken to hospital and unfortunately one succumbed."



Nairobi police chief Moses Ombati has appealed for calm after youths reportedly attacked the nearby Alamin mosque.


Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa have suffered a series of grenade attacks since Kenya sent troops into Somalia last October.

The attacks in Mombasa escalated after radical Islamist preacher Aboud Rogo Mohammed was killed in a drive-by shooting in August.


In July, 15 people were killed in raids on churches in Garissa, near Kenya's border with Somalia.


There was speculation that al-Shabab or its sympathisers were responsible.


Those attacks prompted the country's Inter-Religious Council chairman to urge a united front against sectarian division.


Adan Wachu told the BBC Network Africa programme at the time: "There are people out there who are determined to make Kenya another Nigeria.

"It's not going to be allowed to have a sectarian division in this country - whoever wants to do that will of course fail."


Attacks on churches in Nigeria have been frequent this year.

Many of them have been blamed on the Boko Haram group, which wants to establish Islamic law in a country where the north is largely Muslim and the south mainly Christian and animist.