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Rwanda: One killed and at least 28 wounded in Kigali grenade blasts

Kigali – Two grenade blasts in Rwanda’s capital Kigali have killed one person and wounded at least 28 people, the latest of a series of attacks, police and medics said.

The explosions happened within an hour of each other on Saturday evening. Witnesses said men in civilian clothes threw the first grenade from a moving car at a busy market area at around 7 p.m. The second grenade was thrown at a bus park in Kigali’s Nyabugogo district.

“Investigations have begun into the blasts. It’s too early to establish a relationship with earlier blasts. We are still comparing the evidence,” police spokesman Eric Kayiranga told Reuters.

There have been at least six grenade attacks in Kigali since early December.

President Paul Kagame’s administration has linked some of the previous attacks to former army chief Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who fled into exile in South Africa in February. He denies the allegations.

A Reuters witness said baskets of spilt fruit lay abandoned among pools of dried blood at the scene of the first explosion. A doctor at a university hospital who did not want to be named said 32 people had been wounded, some critically.

Violence ahead of August’s presidential election may taint the central African nation’s stable and secure image, which has made it a popular destination for gorilla tracking and helped tourism become the largest foreign exchange earner.

On Saturday, Kagame was nominated the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party’s candidate for the Aug. 9 ballot, a vote he is widely expected to win.

Rights groups have warned of a government crackdown on the opposition and the media in the run-up to the poll after the suspension of two newspapers and the arrest of an outspoken opposition leader charged with crimes linked to genocide.

Source: Reuters.

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