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Witnesses said the attackers arrived in a car and two motorcycles, opening fire and throwing homemade bombs, causing a stampede. They said worshippers were gunned down as they tried to flee.
“They first attacked the open-air service outside the faculty of medicine,” one witness said. “They threw in explosives and fired shots, causing a stampede among worshippers. They now pursued them, shooting them with guns . . . They also attacked another service at the sporting complex.”
A witness who said he was at the sporting complex at the time of the attack reported hearing gunshots outside while they were praying. “Then there was pandemonium,” he said, adding that he later saw two men outside shooting indiscriminately.
In the Nairobi incident, a worshipper set off a grenade during a church service causing chaos and killing one worshipper.
“It was horrible. People were screaming all over and blood was all over,” resident Samuel Kimani Mwandati said outside the God’s House of Miracles Church in Nairobi’s Ngara neighbourhood.
The area police chief, Joseph Gichangi, said there had been “one fatality”, and later police estimates put the number of injured at 15.
Gichangi said the assailant was reportedly a member of the congregation and fled immediately after setting off the grenade. Witnesses said he was armed.
“We saw a man running out after the blast and when we chased him he pointed a pistol at us, so we ran back,” Kennedy Wasilwa recounted.
Joseph Kimani, who owns a shop nearby, told AFP he rushed to the church after hearing “a loud blast”, and initially thought the church had caught fire. “Then I found people screaming and some were trying to assist others who had injuries,” he said.
Inside the church a young man lay motionless, Mwandati recounted. “We knew he was dead or seriously injured. He is the one who has died.”
Police said witnesses provided a description of the attacker and urged the community to assist their investigation.
While the attacks in Nigeria are blamed on the Islamic militant group Boko Haram, which is against Western education, another Islamic religious sect, al Shebaab is believed to be behind the Kenyan attacks.
The group earlier this month threatened retribution and revenge for the continued presence of Kenyan troops on Somali land.
Nairobi has been hit by a series of unclaimed blasts since late 2011, which Kenyan officials have blamed on Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked al Shebaab Islamists.
All the attacks have been roundly condemned internationally.
President Goodluck Jonathan, during a visit on Saturday to the newspaper offices in Abuja hit by Thursday’s suicide attack, did not answer directly when asked whether dialogue was necessary to stop the violence.
“You may dialogue, you may not dialogue depending on the circumstances,” Jonathan told reporters, adding: “But we will exploit every means possible to bring this to an end.” — AFP/The Herald.
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