The scene of an explosion in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, on Tuesday

At least five people have been killed in a suspected terror attack on an upmarket hotel complex in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, reports suggest.

Eyewitnesses reported a number of casualties at the DusitD2 hotel and office complex in the city’s Westlands neighbourhood after an explosion and suicide bombing that have been claimed by al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist militant group.

Kenya‘s interior minister, Fred Matiangi, said at about 11pm local time that the “situation is under control” and that all affected buildings had been cleared.

Authorities did not release official death toll and injury figures, nor detail of how many attackers were thought to have been involved. Witness accounts suggested at least five people had died and some hospitals appealed for blood donations in the wake of the assault.

Survivors of the deadly attack described a massive explosion and the bodies of people shot dead while sitting at a cafe.

Enoch Kibet, who works as a cleaner in the complex, said: “We were changing our shifts and that is when I heard a loud blast and people were screaming.” She said she escaped by crawling out of a gate in the basement. ”I couldn’t believe I was alive. The blast was so loud and shook the whole complex,” she added.

Several large international businesses including Dow Chemical and Reckitt Benckiser have offices in the Riverside area, while the Australian embassy is across the road.

The DusitD2 complex is about a mile away from the Westgate shopping mall, where al-Shabaab carried out a days-long siege in 2013, killing 67 people.