NAIROBI May 21 (Reuters) - A suspected grenade blast near a mosque wounded
11 people in the eastern Kenyan town of Garissa on Tuesday, close to the
border with Somalia, police and disaster officials said.
The attack happened a day after suspected Somalia al Shabaab militants
killed at least 12 people in northern Kenya's Mandera County in an ambush.
Kenyan warplanes have been targeting al Shabaab positions in Somalia over
the past days, as the country pursues the militants who have carried out a
series of gun, bomb and grenade attacks on its territory. It sent in troops
in 2011.
Police spokesman Masoud Mwinyi said one of the 11 wounded was in a serious
condition but the rest were out of danger. A second grenade failed to
detonate, he said.
The government-run National Disaster Operations Centre said on its Twitter
feed the blast occurred near a mosque and that three suspects had been
arrested.
Neither explicitly said al Shabaab was to blame, but suspicion is likely to
fall on the al Qaeda linked Islamist group.
While al Shabaab has not claimed the most recent series of attacks, the fear
of more has led to Britain, the United States and other Western governments
to warn holidaymakers against visiting Kenya.
On Sunday, Kenya said its warplanes had hit an explosives-making compound,
some 300 km southwest of the Somalia capital Mogadishu, two days after
explosions at a market in Nairobi left at least 12 people dead.
On Tuesday, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said on its
Twitter feed that another air strike in the same region had killed more than
50 al Shabaab fighters.
Al Shabaab's spokesman for military operations, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab,
told Reuters the attacks wounded six.
Al Shabaab killed at least 67 people in a gun and grenade raid on a Nairobi
shopping mall last September, claiming it as revenge for attacks on its
fighters by Kenyan troops in Somalia. (Additional reporting by George
Obulutsa in Nairobi, Noor Ali in Isiolo, Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar in
Mogadishu; Writing George Obulutsa; Editing by Alison Williams)