BBC News Africa
30 September 2012 Last updated at 12:19 GMT
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.
"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.
'Another Nigeria'
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.
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