UPDATE: Death toll from Kenya hotel attack rises to 15

The death toll arising from an attack on an upscale hotel and office complex in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi on Tuesday has risen to 15 incoming reports reveal.

Identification papers indicated that 11 of the victims were Kenyans, one was American and one British, while two others were not carrying documents.

A U.S. State Department official confirmed one of the victims was American.

“We can confirm that a U.S. citizen was killed in the attack,” the official said without giving further details.

Kenya police warned the “terror attack”, which echoed a 2013 assault on a Nairobi shopping centre, may be ongoing, with assailants still inside the upscale 14 Riverside Drive complex.

“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.

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The attack was immediately claimed by feared militant group al-Shabab.

“We are currently conducting an operation in Nairobi,” the group’s military operations spokesman told Al Jazeera.

A woman working in a neighbouring building who witnessed the incident said; “We are under attack,” another person in an office inside a complex in the Dusit hotel told the Reuters news agency, then hung up. Local television showed smoke rising from the area.

Reports say flames and plumes of black smoke billowed into the sky from the parking lot of the compound where several vehicles were on fire, with scores of people fleeing the compound, some of them lightly injured.

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