Just one day after international warnings over terror concerns, twin bombings killed at least 10 people in Nairobi.
More than 70 people were injured in the blasts in the Kenyan capital. Nairobi police arrested one man at the scene blamed by witnesses of having a hand in the attack. Kenya's government suspects the terror group Al Shabab engineered the attack. (Via BBC)
WITNESS: "I saw someone behind the car. He hit the car with something. I saw smoke. As people were running away, there was another explosion." (Via Al Jazeera)
Al Shabab was the group behind last September's Nairobi mall shootings that resulted in 67 deaths. The militants specifically targeted non-Muslims in that attack. (Via NBC)
Friday's two bombings happened simultaneously in Nairobi's Eastleigh neighborhood — one explosion in a minibus, the second inside the Gikomba market.
Via Twitter, Kenya's Red Cross asked for blood donations to treat the tens of people wounded. The casualty count could still be climbing.
The Al Shabab group suspected in the bombings operates from rural areas in Somalia and Kenya and imposes strict Sharia law in certain regions. One of its main goals is countering Western influence, and a couple Western governments even warned of an attack just 24 hours prior.
Both the United Kingdom and U.S. had issued travel warnings and urged its tourists to evacuate Kenya. On Thursday, the U.S. said it had received "information about potential terrorist threats aimed at U.S., Western, and Kenyan interests in Kenya, including the Nairobi area. ... Terrorist acts can include suicide operations, bombings." (Via U.S. Department of State)
Those warnings led to the evacuation of more than 500 tourists, most of them British, leaving through the port city Mombasa. (Via Channel 5)
Just this month, Kenya has seen two other attacks: the bombing of a Nairobi highway that killed three people and an attack at a bus stop in Mombasa that killed four. In both cases and on Friday, twin bombs were set off almost simultaneously.
