Kenyan rush-hour blast kills one

By Andrew Cawthorne and Jeremy Clarke

NAIROBI (Reuters) - An apparent bomb blast in a Nairobi street on Monday killed one person, injured dozens and left a severed leg hanging from a shattered window.

A senior policeman at the scene said the explosion, which also left a mangled corpse in the street and sent passers-by flying through the air, appeared to be a suicide bombing.

"This sort of attack is very unusual for Nairobi," he said.

Witnesses saw a man with a package running down the road moments before the blast at around 8 a.m. (6:00 a.m. British time), and said the body they saw after the blast was his.

Although considered a relatively peaceful country in a volatile region, Kenya was hit by large bomb blasts in 1998 and 2002 that were blamed on al Qaeda.

Kenyan police said in a statement they were "pursuing promising leads," and local media said a taxi driver thought to have ferried the attacker was among more than a dozen witnesses helping officers with their enquiries.

Suspicion could fall on militant Islamists from neighbouring Somalia or members of the criminal Mungiki gang that has been wreaking havoc in Kenya for the last month.

The blast occurred during rush hour near the Ambassadeur hotel and a restaurant in the packed central business district. It shattered shop windows and damaged a nearby bus.