A lorry carrying gas exploded in Embakasi district around 23:30 (20:30 GMT), “igniting a huge ball of fire”, a government spokesperson said.

Housing, businesses and cars were damaged with video showing a huge blaze raging close to blocks of flats.

Earlier, the government had said the blast happened at a gas plant. The cause is still being established.

Embakasi police chief Wesley Kimeto said that an adult and a child had died in the explosion, adding that the death toll may rise.

The fireball from the blast had “spread widely”, according to Mr Mwaura, and a flying gas cylinder had hit a garments and textiles warehouse, burning it down.

The blaze is also reported to have spread through several apartment complexes.

Witnesses told local media they had felt tremors immediately after the blast.

Many of the injured are said to have inhalation injuries and they include at least 25 children, the Standard newspaper reports.

One of those hurt, Boniface Sifuna, described what had happened for Reuters news agency: “I got burnt by an exploding gas canister as I was trying to escape,” he said.

“It exploded right in front of me and the impact knocked me down and the flames engulfed me. I am lucky that I was strong enough to get away.”

James Ngoge, who lives across the street from where the blast happened, told the AFP news agency that he was in his house at the time and “heard a huge explosion”.

“It felt like it was going to collapse. At first, we didn’t even know what was happening, it was like an earthquake.

“I have a business on the road that was completely destroyed.”

A journalist for the Nation newspaper living in the area said everyone had left their houses after the blast.

The Kenya Red Cross said on social media that crews had been “tirelessly battling the flames”.

Government spokesman Isaac Mwaura said the blast scene had been secured and a command centre had been set up to help co-ordinate rescue operations.

“Kenyans are hereby advised to keep off the cordoned area in order to allow the rescue mission to be carried out [with] minimal disruptions,” he added.

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Lee Jae-myung also urged voters to support his liberal Democratic Party in the April parliamentary elections in order to keep what he described as President Yoon Suk Yeol’s “prosecutorial dictatorship” in check.

With Yoon, “our society has become even more extremely polarized,” said Lee, speaking at his first news conference since the Jan. 2 attack. Instead of “leading the way in promoting national unity,” Yoon is “obsessed with choosing sides and waging an outdated ideological war.”

Lee was attacked during an event in the southeastern city of Busan. The attacker, a man police say they believe acted alone, approached him allegedly for an autograph and stabbed him in the neck, then left him bleeding and slumped on the floor.

Lee underwent surgery and spent eight days in hospital before his release. The suspect, who was arrested, later told investigators that he wanted to kill Lee to prevent him from becoming president.

At the news conference, Lee, who narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential race, also claimed that his rival’s allegedly reckless policies were letting a decaying job market and tensions with nuclear-armed North Korea get out of hand.

Lee is seen as one of the early favorites for the 2027 presidential election but has struggled with a prolonged prosecutorial investigation over corruption allegations stemming from his days as mayor of the city of Seongnam, a job he held for a decade until 2018. He has denied legal wrongdoing and accused Yoon, a prosecutor-turned-president, of pursuing a political vendetta.

Lee in his remarks Wednesday described the attack against him as “an assassination attempt” in broad daylight, and an event previously “unthinkable in South Korea, reputed as the safest country in the world.”

In another attack last week, Bae Hyunjin, a lawmaker from Yoon’s People Power Party, was treated for lacerations after being repeatedly struck in the head by a rock-wielding 14-year-old boy.

South Korean politics are deeply divided along ideological and generational lines, as well as regional loyalties, with political bickering intensifying ahead of the April vote. The elections are widely seen as a referendum on Yoon, who has already been struggling with low approval ratings and an opposition-controlled National Assembly that has limited the implementation of his agenda.

Since taking office, Yoon has turned from the dovish approach of his liberal predecessor, Moon Jae-in, who had pursued inter-Korean rapprochement, and instead moved to expand the South’s combined military exercises with the United States and Japan to cope with the North’s evolving threats.

Yoon has also sought stronger assurances from Washington that the U.S. would act swiftly and decisively to protect its ally in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack.

Also on Wednesday, Lee reiterated his standing criticism of Yoon’s hardened approach, saying it is contributing to the heightened North-South tensions. He called for renewed South Korean efforts to resume communication with the North — most urgently the revival of a disconnected military hotline between the two to prevent accidental cross-border clashes.

Lee also berated North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for his recent declaration of abandoning the North’s longstanding objective of reconciliation with South Korea and defining the South constitutionally as the North’s most hostile foreign enemy.

Kim’s threats are pushing the Koreas dangerously close to a possible military clash, Lee said adding that preventing an escalation was now the priority.

During a government meeting on Wednesday, Yoon warned of the possibility that North Korea could conduct various provocations ahead of the April elections in attempting to influence the outcome.

Experts say North Korea likely prefers that the opposition to maintain majority in the National Assembly in the South, thereby improving the opposition’s prospects for the presidential election. The North’s reasoning, they say, is that a liberal government in Seoul would be more willing to make concessions to Pyongyang.

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