Two explosions and gunfire have been heard amid an apparent attack at an upscale hotel and office complex in Kenyan capital Nairobi, witnesses say.
Reports indicate that three people have been killed while several others have been injured.
“We are under attack,” another person in an office inside a complex in the DusitD2 hotel told Reuters, then hung up. Local television showed smoke rising from the area.
“I just started hearing gunshots, and then started seeing people running away raising their hands up and some were entering the bank to hide for their lives,” a woman working in a neighbouring building told the news agency. She also heard two explosions, she said.
Nairobi police commander Philip Ndolo said officers had cordoned off the area around Riverside Drive due to a suspected robbery.
However, police spokesman Charles Owino told local media officials were not ruling out an attack by militants.
“We have to go for the highest incident that could take place. The highest incident we have is a terror [attack],” he told Citizen Television.
Anti-terror police have been sent to the site, he added.
Witnesses and police officers nearby have suggested it is a terror attack, reports say. Apparent plainclothes police officers were also spotted at the complex.
In 2013, al–Shabab Islamist extremists killed dozens of people during a days-long siege at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping centre.
A total of 67 people died in that attack.
By Independent