Nairobi attack: Terror group al-Shabaab claims responsibility for suicide bombing at Kenyan hotel complex as reports say at least five killed

The Kenyan Red Cross has urged anyone concerned for the safety and whereabouts of their relatives to call a special hotline in order to trace them.

The Agence France-Presse news agency is reporting that at least five people have been killed in the Nairobi attack, citing one of its photojournalists.

Heavy shooting has just broken out at the site of the earlier attack, reports have said.

A second witness has spoken to the Associated Press, telling them that he saw five bodies at the hotel entrance.

The attack in Nairobi involved a suicide bombing in the foyer of the dusitD2 hotel - severely injuring several guests - and a further explosion in the car park, Kenyan police have said.

Six of the hotel's seven floors have been secured by police, chief Joseph Boinnet said.

At the same time, a witness reported seeing at least four bodies being removed from a building near the hotel, potentially bringing the death toll to seven.

Our defence editor Kim Sengupta has sent in this report, detailing how Western forces gave training to Kenya's security services after the Westgate mall attack by al-Shabaab.

Questions remain over the country's intelligence-gathering, however.

More witness statements have come in.

"We were changing our shifts, and that is when I heard a loud blast and people were screaming," said Enoch Kibet, who works as a cleaner at the cafe and managed to crawl out of a gate in the basement. "I couldn't believe I was alive. The blast was so loud and shook the whole complex." 

A Kenyan police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that bodies were seen in restaurants downstairs and in offices upstairs, but "there was no time to count the dead".

Kenya has been on high alert since last November, an intelligence official has said.

Another witness statement from a security contractor who claims to have been involved in the shoot-out.

"The main door of the hotel was blown open and there was a human arm in the street severed from the shoulder," said Serge Medic, the Swiss owner of a security company who ran to the scene to help when he heard of the attack from his taxi driver.

Medic, who was armed, said he entered the building with a policeman and two soldiers but that they came under fire and were forced to retreat. An unexploded grenade lay in the lobby, he said.

"One man said he saw two armed men with scarves on their head and bandoliers of bullets," Mr Medic said.

Joseph Boinnet, Kenya's national police chief, says the coordinated attack began with an explosion that targeted three vehicles outside a bank while a suicide bomber attacked the hotel lobby. 

He said that a number of hotel guests had been severely injured in the blast.