As many as 70 people were killed and more than a thousand injured yesterday morning in a massive explosion outside the US embassy in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The explosion, believed to have been caused by a car bomb, went off at 10.35 a.m. local time (8.30 a.m. Irish time) in a busy part of the city.
Minutes later another bomb went off in Dar es Salaam, the capital of neighbouring Tanzania, killing six people and injuring more than fifty. The explosions are being treated as terrorist attacks. Most of the casualties from the Nairobi explosion were in office and bank buildings next to the American embassy. Eight American embassy staff were among the dead.
Two commuter-filled buses passing the embassy took the full force of the explosion which shattered windows as far as 10 blocks away. "It must have been a very big bomb," said a Kenyan policeman at the scene soon after the explosion. "I don't know how many have been killed but it was many, many." A huge, water-filled crater in a car park beside the American embassy in Nairobi marks what appears to have been the centre of the blast. A four-storey office block at the rear of the embassy collapsed, killing scores of people and trapping countless others under the rubble. Many of the dead were charred beyond recognition. Among the injured were believed to be the US Ambassador to Kenya, Ms Prudence Bushnell, and the Kenyan Minister for Trade, Mr Joseph Kamotho. Large numbers of Kenyans responded to calls for blood donations from Nairobi's main hospitals and medical staff on leave were asked to return. The bodies of some of the dead were laid out in rows on a patch of grass behind the embassy. The blood-spattered ground was ankledeep in broken glass and pieces of masonry. Dead and injured people were carried away on doors ripped off their hinges by the blast. Passers-by helped rescuers from local and international aid agencies tended to the wounded. Cranes and mechanical diggers were on the scene soon after the blast trying to shift hundreds of tonnes of masonry under which people lay buried.
"My sister is in there," sobbed a distraught woman on the pavement outside the collapsed office building. "Someone help her, please help her." The side of the embassy was totally blown out while a towering bank building opposite was ruined, every window in its 29-storey facade shattered. After the explosion, a huge pall of black smoke hung over the buildings on Haile Selassie Avenue.
"Make way, please make way," screamed a team of rescuers as the badly-lacerated body of a woman on a stretcher was lowered from the third floor of the Kenya Co-op Bank opposite the embassy. The woman was dead. It was impossible to tell how many bodies were still trapped inside the office building which had folded in on itself. Rescue crews assisted by hundreds of civilians climbed about on the mound of rubble searching for survivors.
"We've lost count of the number of dead and wounded," a member of the Kenya Red Cross said. "I've seen so many people hurt with blood on their faces. People have terrible cuts and broken limbs." At that moment a huge cheer went out from the crowd as a survivor was pulled from under a chunk of concrete and passed along a human chain of rescuers. A middle-aged man, he appeared shocked and uncomprehending but otherwise unharmed.
Many people wandered around nearby streets in shock. The escape routes of the walking wounded could be followed by the trails of blood which led away from the scene.
"I saw a white car hurled into the air," said a man who had been walking down Haile Selassie Avenue at the time of the blast. "There was a huge boom and I saw this car going up into the air so high." Vehicles which had been parked in the embassy car-park were instantly ignited by the blast.
The air was filled with the stench of acrid smoke and the sound of sirens as bodies were carried out from the rubble. The banking hall where hundreds of people had been doing business was wrecked. Shoes abandoned in panic were scattered amidst the debris which littered the floor. US marines, some of them blood-spattered, brandished automatic weapons, ordering onlookers and volunteer rescue workers back from their wrecked embassy. An American flag was draped over the perimeter fence.