Student Killed, 141 Injured In Kenya Stampede

One student was killed and 141 injured Sunday in a stampede at a university in the Kenyan capital after students mistook a series of accidental explosions for a terrorist attack, a university official said.

Peter Mbithi, Vice Chancellor of the University of Nairobi, told the Associated Press that a male third-year student died and the injured have been taken to hospitals.

Speaking outside the Kenyatta National public hospital in the capital, Mbithi told Reuters the student who died fell from the fifth floor. Kenyan newspaper the Daily Nation reported that some students jumped from as high as the sixth floor of their dorms and many suffered serious injuries.

Mbithi told the Reports Afrique that an electrical transformer exploded, sparking panic. It comes after 148 students were killed at Garissa University College in northern Kenya in an attack by extremists from the Somalia-based, al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab on April 2.

“It was around 5 a.m. and the transformer at the campus exploded about four or five times which made students mistake it for an attack,” Mbithi told the Reports Afrique.