One student died and more than 100 injured after a faulty electric cable exploded causing a stampede at the University of Nairobi, Kikuyu campus on Sunday. The students are said to have imagined they had been attacked by terrorists, a sign of high tension, a week after gunmen stormed the Garissa university campus killing at least 147 victims.
The Kikuyu campus students jumped from windows at their University of Nairobi residence halls or rushed out in a stampede. The dead student was a male and is said to have fell to his death, after attempting to jump off the fifth floor.
"I could see the students jumping and one of them landed on his head," said third-year student Felix Muriuki. It is said there were three loud blasts, plunging the dormitory into darkness, which heightened the panic among the students.
Witnesses said the explosion occurred at about 4.30 am, setting off terrified screams from the women's wing of a dormitory. The panic spread to the men's wing, where students woke up and scrambled to get out.
The Kenya Power has said the explosion was caused by an overloaded underground cable while initial witness accounts attributed the explosion to a faulty transformer.
Students have said the incident evoked memories of the April 2 attack on Garissa University College, about 200 km from the Kenya-Somali border. Somalia's militant group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack, which also came just before dawn.
This tragedy befalls Kenya while it is still grieving over the students killed in Garissa, with funerals taking place around the country.
The Al Shabaab has killed more than 400 people on Kenyan soil in just two years, including 67 during a siege at Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in 2013, damaging tourism and inward investment.
Kenya responded to the latest attack with airstrikes on imagined al Shabaab targets and closure of informal financial firms suspected to be sympathetic to the militants cause. The Kenyan government has also frozen several accounts they believe are linked to al Shabaab.
In what could be viewed largely as a knee-jerk reaction, the government has also said the United Nations refugee agency should relocate hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees sheltering at the Dadaab camp in the remote northeastern region.
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