Nairobi: One student was killed and 141 others were injured on Sunday morning after an electricity transformer blast caused a stampede at the University of Nairobi's Kikuyu Campus.
University of Nairobi vice chancellor Peter Mbithi said the students jumped from their hostels to the ground floor when they mistook the explosion of the transformer for a terrorist attack at 4 a.m., Xinhua news agency reported.
"One hundred fortyone students are being attended to in hospitals," Mbithi said.
"The explosion made many of the students think it was Al Shabaab who had attacked," said a student with a scratch on the face.
Some of the students jumped from as high as the sixth floor of the buildings during the melee, police told Xinhua, adding that many were seriously injured.
The incident comes two weeks after 148 people at the Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya were killed during a siege by militants from the Al-Shabaab terror group.
Officials said the students avoided using the main entrance to get out and jumped out through the windows because they believed the "attackers" were there.
