AFP: Kenya grenade attack wounds 10 in tourist resort

AFP: Kenya grenade attack wounds 10 in tourist resort

Ten people were wounded on Thursday when attackers hurled a grenade into a restaurant in a popular coastal tourist resort town in Kenya, police said.
The attack, one of a series of bomb or grenade blasts in Kenya, is the latest to target areas popular with foreign visitors who are key to the economy.
"We had an explosion at the bar and about 10 people were injured," said Jack Ekakuro, the local police chief in the Indian Ocean town of Diani, south of Mombasa.
Attackers targeted the Tandoori bar in Diani in the early hours of Thursday, when it was still crowded with people celebrating over the New Year holiday.
The holiday is one of the busiest times on Kenya's coast, a mainly Muslim region whose white beaches are popular with tourists but which is also troubled by extremist groups and religious tensions.
Barman Nelson Ngoa said that customers in the bar at the time of the attack had included British, German and Italian visitors, but regional police chief Aggrey Adoli said that all those wounded were Kenyans.
Adoli confirmed the attackers had used a grenade, vowing to track them down and "punish them accordingly for their cowardly action".
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Since Kenyan troops invaded southern Somalia in October 2011 to help oust the neighbouring country's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents, it has been hit by a series of attacks.
Last month attackers hurled a grenade at British tourists as they drove from Diani to the main port city of Mombasa, but it failed to explode.
Homegrown groups including the Islamist Al-Hijra group, a radical organisation formerly known as the Muslim Youth Center, operate on Kenya's coast and have been linked to the Shebab.
Grenades have been hurled into restaurants in Mombasa and crowded areas in the capital Nairobi, and there has been a string of attacks in the remote northeast region bordering Somalia.
The Shebab claimed the brutal September assault on Nairobi's upmarket Westgate mall in which at least 67 people died in a four-day siege of the shopping centre popular with foreigners.
The Shebab on Wednesday evening set off twin bombs at a hotel in the Somali capital, killing 11. It claimed the attack on Thursday, saying it was the start of its campaign for the new year, warning foreigners will "have no safe haven in Somalia."