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Kenya grenade attack update: Suspect in police custody
One of the people injured in a grenade attack on a bar in the coastal city of Mombasa is being held as a suspect, police said Monday.
The blast killed one person and injured dozens of people watching a soccer match.
Thirty people are still in hospital Monday morning, three of them in a serious condition, provincial police chief Aggrey Adoli told journalists.
“One of those wounded people is assisting us because he is providing contradictory statements. He is being held as a suspect,” Adoli went on.
The blast tore through the Jericho bar, in the densely populated Mishomoroni district of the city, at about 10:00 pm (1500 EST) Sunday when soccer fans were following the Euro 2012 quarter-final match between England and Italy.
The attack came just two days after the United States had warned its citizens of an imminent threat of such an attack in the coastal city and Kenya police had arrested two Iranians on suspicion of planning bomb attacks.
Just hours before Sunday’s attack, a senior Kenyan official had denounced the US warning.
“It is a reckless advisory and it was totally uncalled for,” the head of the Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet, Francis Kimemia, had told journalists in Mombasa. “It is aimed at sabotaging the economy of Kenya.”
Kenya officials had written to the US embassy to get them to “reverse their decision”, he added.