Eight female bodies have been recovered so far from a dumpsite in a Nairobi slum, Kenyan police said on Sunday, adding that they were pursuing possible links to cults, serial killers or rogue medical practitioners.

The gruesome discoveries of mutilated and dismembered bodies dumped in plastic bags in a rubbish tip in Mukuru in the south of the Kenyan capital have horrified and angered the nation.

Kenya's acting national police chief Douglas Kanja said the first six corpses were found on Friday and more body parts were retrieved on Saturday, with preliminary investigations revealing that all were female.

"They were severely dismembered in different states of decomposition and left in sacks," Kanja told a press conference, adding that investigations were ongoing.

Kanja also called for public cooperation in "so that we bring the perpetrators of these heinous acts to book".

Amin Mohammed, the head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, said the ages of the victims ranged between about 18 to 30 and that all had been killed and butchered in the same manner.

He said police were looking into a number of hypotheses.

"Are we dealing with a cult that is associated with criminal activities, are we dealing with serial killers," he said at the press briefing alongside Kanja.

"We even could be dealing with rogue medical practitioners [involved in] criminal activities."

Kenya was left reeling last year by the discovery of mass graves in a forest near the Indian Ocean coast containing the bodies of more than 400 members of a doomsday sect, one of the world's worst cult-related massacres. (AFP)