JUST IN: Grenade hits Nairobi bar, 14 hurt, no dead- police

 A grenade attack on a bar in the centre of Nairobi early Monday wounded 14 people who needed hospital treatment, Kenyan police said, adding no one was killed.

Capital news radio quoted a witness who said a man had asked to be let in to the bar shortly after 1 a.m. British time, when he hurled a grenade and fled the scene.

"It was a grenade attack. There are no deaths," central Nairobi police chief Eric Mugambi told Reuters.

The blast came a week after Kenya launched a cross-border operation against al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants in southern Somalia after a wave of kidnappings of foreigners on Kenyan soil.

Al Shabaab had threatened major reprisals if Kenyan troops did not withdraw, prompting the U.S. embassy in Kenya to warn of an 'imminent threat' of a terrorist attack in the East African country.

No one has claimed responsibility for the bar blast.

Reuters footage showed blood and beer bottles splattered on the ground of Mwaura's bar, which is frequented by blue-collar labourers attracted by its cheap beer and spirits.

Blood stained a sink and overturned seats and debris littered the floor. Police cordoned off the area as an officer examined damage on the walls from the force of the explosion.

"The guys came out running covered in blood. We helped them wash the blood off and they were carried away by ambulances," Jacob Musembi, a vendor at the scene, told Reuters.

"I'm very scared for my life because I don't know who they'll target next," he said.

A doctor at Kenyatta National Hospital said he had treated 13 people so far, some with serious wounds, but mostly with light head injuries.

Al Shabaab have denied responsibility for the Kenyan kidnappings, saying Nairobi was using them as a pretext for its military campaign.

Kenya has in the past initiated brief cross-border incursions, but the latest operation is on a much larger scale raising fears the country could be dragged into the anarchic Horn of Africa's two-decade-civil war.

The Islamist militants have proven capable of launching large scale suicide attacks within Somalia and outside.

Earlier this month, a suicide truck bombing claimed by the militants killed more than 70 people when it exploded outside a compound housing government ministries in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.

The militants have also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, which killed 79 people last year. That strike, the militants' first on foreign soil, was in revenge for Uganda's contribution to the 9,000-strong AU peacekeeping force.
Source: Reuters