Kenya: grenade attack on church kills police officer
A man is stretchered as he arrives at the Garissa General Provincial Hospital, close to the border with Somalia, on November 4, 2012 after a grenade attack on a Kenyan church that left one policeman dead and 14 other people wounded. Kenya has seen a wave of grenade attacks on cities including the capital Nairobi and the key port of Mombasa since the country sent troops into Somalia in October last year to fight Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents.
Kenyan media today said a grenade attack on a church in the country's east killed a police officer and left 11 people wounded, reported BBC News.
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Several people were reportedly left in critical condition and had to be airlifted to Nairobi for medical care.
Authorities are currently searching for the attackers, believed to be members of the radical Somali-based al-Shabaab group, said BBC. Local officials said the blast may have been a revenge attack for Kenya's anti-militant activity in Somalia.
A local police officer told Agence-France Presse that the grenade "ripped through the roof during prayer session" at the Utawala interdenominational church in Garissa, a town near Kenya's Somali border.
"My mother was leading the prayer session when I heard a loud bang, we were forced to lie down, after a few seconds we woke up only to find some of the worshippers bleeding profusely and writhing in pain including my mother," the pastor's daughter, Beth Mwathi, told state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, according to UPI.
Church attacks in the same town in July left some 15 people dead, said BBC.