Deadly twin blasts hit Kenyan port city

At least three killed and several wounded in explosions in Mombasa. Two explosions in Kenya’s port city of Mombasa have killed at least three people and injured several others, witnesses and local media have said. Kenya’s interior ministry said three people were killed and scores wounded in the Mwembe Tayari area of Mombasa after a grenade was thrown into a crowd near a bus stop. Another blast occurred at the Reef Hotel, a beachside tourist resort in the Nyari area of the city, Kenya’s disaster operations centre said. “We had two incidents, one at the bus station where three people lost their lives. In the second incident that occurred near a hotel in Nyali there were no casualties,” a police official told the AFP news agency. There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday’s attack, but Mombasa, has been hit by a wave of sectarian violence as the government engages in a major crackdown against Islamists suspected of being connected to neighbouring Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab rebels. Al-Shabab has carried out a series attacks on Kenyan soil to avenge the presence of Kenyan troops in Somalia, and was responsible for September’s siege on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall that left at least 71 people dead.