An air ambulance crashed into a residential area outside Nairobi on August 7, 2025, killing all four people aboard and two people on the ground, Kenyan officials said. Two other people on the ground were seriously injured.
The aircraft belonged to Amref Flying Doctors and was identified as a Cessna Citation XLS, a midsize business jet used by the medical aviation provider. It left Nairobi's Wilson Airport at 2:17 p.m. local time for a flight to Somaliland and came down in the Mwihoko area of Ruiru, Kiambu County, shortly after 3 p.m., according to Al Jazeera's account.
Kiambu County Commissioner Henry Wafula said the four occupants, including the pilot, died. The plane struck a house, killing two people there and injuring two others. The toll brought the total number of deaths to at least six. Images from the area showed aircraft debris scattered through the neighborhood as emergency personnel worked at the site and crowds gathered nearby.
The Kenya Red Cross dispatched rescue teams to Mwihoko. Witness accounts described the aircraft on fire before impact and the force of its passage shaking a nearby building, but those observations do not establish why the jet crashed. Amref did not announce a possible cause in the information available for the event date.
Stephen Gitau, chief executive of Amref Flying Doctors, confirmed that one of the organization's aircraft had been involved in a fatal accident. The provider said it was cooperating with aviation authorities and emergency teams as they worked to establish the facts. Its initial public statement focused on those aboard and promised further details after confirmation.
The Associated Press also reported that the jet had departed Nairobi and was headed to Somaliland. Its account matched the county commissioner's breakdown of four deaths in the aircraft and two in the house. The agreement between the reports supports the initial casualty total, while leaving the accident's technical cause unresolved. Neither account reported whether a patient was aboard, so the victims are described only by their location in the aircraft or on the ground.
Amref's aviation operation traces its roots to the Flying Doctors of East Africa, founded in 1957. That history provides context for the aircraft's medical role but does not explain the crash.
As of August 7, investigators had yet to disclose flight data, mechanical findings or a formal sequence of failure. The established facts were that the ambulance jet fell in a populated neighborhood less than an hour after takeoff, killing six people across the aircraft and the home it hit, seriously injuring two others, and prompting a coordinated emergency and aviation response.
