Kenyan police said they have launched an investigation after the mutilated bodies of six women were found on Friday in piles of garbage at a dump site in a Nairobi slum.

Police briefly fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse an angry crowd at a police station near the site of the grisly discovery in Mukuru, in the south of the capital, an AFP journalist said.

The alarm was raised following the discovery of six severely mutilated bodies, all female, in various stages of decomposition, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations said in a statement.

The bodies were wrapped in nylon papers and reinforced with nylon ropes.

Witnesses had earlier reported the bodies of nine men and women had been found.

Homicide detectives and forensic officers were at the scene, an abandoned quarry that was filled with water and used as a dumping ground for rubbish.

We need answers from police because this is something that needs to be investigated very fast, said Lucy Njambi, who lives in Mukuru.

It is shocking what I have seen. Bodies stashed in sacks and dumped at the dumpsite.

The DCI said preliminary investigations suggested all the victims had been killed in the same manner, without elaborating.

The bodies have been taken to the city morgue to await postmortem examinations, itadded. (AFP)

A man pointing towards a body while standing with others on the edge of a dumpsite where six bodies were found at the landfill in Mukuru slum, Nairobi