One person has died hours after a bomb blast in the Kenyan capital that wounded eight others, the latest in a string of attacks, police said Thursday.

The attack, a "roadside bomb which had been placed in a hole in the ground,” according to Nairobi police chief Moses Nyakwama, was detonated during rush hour on Wednesday evening as people returned home from work.

Somalia's Al-Qaida-linked Shebab fighters briefly took control of a small town on the border with Kenya in a battle that left at least 12 people dead, military officials and witnesses said Sunday.

Heavy fighting broke out late Saturday afternoon in Bulohawo and lasted into the evening, residents and military commanders said, with residents confirming that the Shebab took full control of the town for a few hours before Somali troops were able to reinforce their positions.

Regional leaders called on DR Congo rebel group M23 Saturday to end hostilities and leave a key eastern town they seized in a rampant advance that has sparked fears of a wider conflict.

The meeting of east African heads of state went forward without a key player -- Rwandan President Paul Kagame, whose country the United Nations accuses of backing the rebels -- and wrapped up after less than an hour.

Inter-ethnic clashes broke out on Monday in a Nairobi district over a bus bomb blamed on sympathizers of Somalia's Al-Qaida-linked Shebab insurgents, leaving several people wounded.

An AFP reporter at the scene said police used tear gas and fired into the air to contain the violence, which broke out at Eastleigh, a predominantly Somali district of Nairobi where a bomb that went off Sunday on a bus killed seven and wounded many more.

Seven people were killed and many more wounded when an apparent explosive device was hurled at a bus in a predominantly Somali area of the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Sunday, police and the Red Cross said.

Nairobi police chief Moses Nyakwama said the blast occurred on a bus in the district of Eastleigh, where mainly Somalis or Kenyans of Somali origin live and which has been the target of other attacks in recent weeks.

The death toll from a weekend ambush on Kenyan police officers in the north of the country rose to 42 on Monday after more bodies were found, police said.

"We have never lost such a big number of officers," a police source said on condition of anonymity.

The police death toll from an ambush on Kenyan officers in the north of the country more than doubled to 26 Sunday after more bodies were found.

Locals in the northern district where the initial attack took place also said that fighting between police and gunmen had continued for a second day.

At least seven Kenyan police officers were killed and 21 more were wounded Saturday as they pursued cattle rustlers in the north of the country, a police official told Agence France Presse.

"The officers were in a team pursuing stolen cattle when they were ambushed," said a senior officer, who did not wish to be named. Some of the assailants had been killed and others wounded, he added.

A policeman died on Sunday after being wounded in a grenade attack on a church in eastern Kenya that also injured 14 other people, police said.

"We have one fatality," said regional police chief Philip Tuimur after the attack on a church in a police camp in the town of Garissa, not far from the Somali border.

Kenyan police shot dead two suspected Islamists feared to be plotting attacks in the country's popular tourist coastal region, officials said Sunday.

Shooting broke out as police raided a house in the early hours of Sunday morning in the Majengo suburbs of Mombasa, Kenya's main port, after a tip-off from a suspect arrested on Saturday.