MOMBASA: Four rioters died and a church was torched amid gunfire yesterday, as police in Kenya’s port city of Mombasa quashed protests sparked by the killing of a Muslim cleric.
Battles broke out as armed paramilitary police moved towards a mosque, whose leaders have been accused of links to Somalia’s Islamist Shebaab, insurgents who massacred 67 in Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall last month.
Angry protestors took to the streets after unknown gunmen assassinated a popular Muslim preacher and his three companions in a drive-by shooting late on Thursday, a killing that mirrored the murder of another extremist cleric last year that provoked days of deadly riots.
“We will not tolerate unruly youth taking over the town,” Mombasa police chief Kipkemoi Rop said, adding that 24 had been arrested. A Salvation Army church was torched, but firemen brought the blaze under control.
Mombasa is Kenya’s main port and a major tourist hub, popular with visitors coming to enjoy the white sand beaches on the Indian Ocean coastline.
Riots, which began after midday Muslim prayers, had largely calmed by late afternoon with Kenya’s national crisis centre reporting only “sporadic violence” and stone-throwing youths.
The crisis centre said three people died of stab wounds, while the Red Cross said another hit by gunfire died in hospital. Seven others were wounded.
Slain cleric Sheikh Ibrahim Ismail was viewed as the successor to Aboud Rogo Mohammed, a controversial preacher accused of links to Somalia’s Shebaab insurgents, who was shot dead in August 2012.
Meanwhile, the fire that gutted part of Nairobi’s international airport in early August was caused by an electrical fault, Kenya’s Transport Minister Michael Kamau said yesterday.
“From the evidence collected, experts’ report and eye witness accounts, it is evident that the fire... resulted from an electrical hitch that started from the electric distribution board,” Kamau told journalists.
He said the fire had a negligible impact on passenger traffic, as a monthly average of some 400,000 passengers used the airport in August and in September, little changed from the previous year.
Operations at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, severely disrupted in the days following the fire, were now back on track, he said.
All departure gates have now reopened and domestic flight operations have returned to the domestic terminal after temporarily operating out of the cargo section.
International arriving and departing passengers now no longer mingle in the same corridors, the minister added.
AFP
