US warns citizens of violent crime in Kenya

NAIROBI, Feb 7 (Reuters) The United States has told its citizens to think carefully about visiting Kenya due to an upsurge in violent crime it said the Kenyan authorities had a limited capacity to deal with.

The warning was issued after high-profile carjackings involving US citizens. On Sunday, an American woman travelling in the car of a top Kenyan AIDS researcher was shot by carjackers who killed her friend and wounded his wife.

Last month, carjackers shot dead two American women -- the relatives of a US diplomat -- as they sat in a US embassy car on the outskirts of Nairobi.

The travel advisory issued yesterday asked Americans to ''consider carefully the risks of travel to Kenya ... due to ongoing safety and security concerns.'' ''Violent criminal attacks, including armed carjacking and home invasions and burglary, can occur at any time and in any location and are becoming increasingly frequent brazen, vicious, and often fatal,'' the advisory said.

''Kenyan authorities have limited capacity to deter and investigate such acts,'' it added.

Washington already maintains a high-level travel advisory against Kenya and has issued a specific warning about terrorist threats in the past after the US embassy in Nairobi was bombed in 1998, killing 214 people.

There has been an increasing number of reports of attacks on diplomats or their families in the past six months.

In September, a US embassy official was shot in the chest, while a month earlier, the Russian ambassador was stabbed while on the roadside attending to a sick grandchild.

Carjackings of Kenyans and foreigners are common in Nairobi, where gangsters pounce on people for cash, bank cards, mobile phones or cars. Rapes are also common during the robberies.

REUTERS AB PM2014