One dead, church torched in riots after Muslim cleric killed

Mombasa: Rioters torched a church amid gunfire and tear gas on Friday, as police in Kenya’s port city of Mombasa quashed protests sparked by the killing of a Muslim cleric.

One person was shot dead as armed paramilitary police moved towards a mosque, whose leaders have been accused of links to Somalia’s Islamist Al Shabab, insurgents who massacred 67 in Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall last month.

Riots broke out 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 later 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 calmed by late afternoon, with Kenya’s national crisis centre reporting “sporadic violence” and stone-throwing youths. The Red Cross said a man hit by gunfire had died in hospital, while eight others were wounded.

Slain cleric Shaikh Ebrahim Esmail was viewed as the successor to Aboud Rogo Mohammad, a controversial preacher accused of links to Somalia’s Al Shabab insurgents, who was shot dead in August 2012.

Like in the case of Rogo, radical preachers have said the killing of Esmail was an “execution” by the police, which denied the claim.

During rioting, thick smoke from burning tyres rose around Mombasa’s Masjid Musa mosque — where both Rogo and Esmail used to preach — as police fired tear gas and youths hurled stones in return. Several gunshots were heard.

Salim Abdullah, a witness, said he saw one man who had been shot in the belly “bleeding profusely” with his clothes soaked in blood.

“We just pray for him,” Abdullah said.

It was not clear who was responsible for the gunfire.

Sporadic clashes and looting were reported in several districts of the city, but as dusk approached, the police insisted they were in control.

“We have deployed enough officers to get the streets back to normal,” Rop added.

The killing of Esmail follows attacks last month by the Al Qaida linked Al Shabab, who launched a deadly assault on an upmarket Nairobi shopping mall in a four-day bloodbath.

The Islamists have since threatened “rivers of blood” would flow in fresh attacks if Kenya does not pull its troops out of Somalia.

Rogo was on US and UN sanctions lists for allegedly supporting Al Shabab, including through recruitment and fundraising.

Another radical cleric, Abubaker Shariff Ahmad — known more commonly by his nickname “Makaburi” or “grave” in Swahili — accused the police of the “outright execution” of Esmail and his comrades.

“The police are killing people while saying it is a war against terrorism, this is a war against Islam,” said Makaburi, a former close colleague of Rogo who is also on a UN sanctions list, accused of recruiting and fundraising for Al Shabab. “These people have been executed.”

Local police chief Julius Wanjohi has appealed to the public for information on the attack on the cleric.

Salim Abdi was the only person in the car to survive the attack.

“There were gunshots and the vehicle veered off the road, I don’t know how I walked out of the vehicle alive,” Abdi said. “All four others I was with in the vehicle died on the spot.”

An AFP reporter said the car, whose windows were shattered and doors riddled with bullet holes, had smashed into the verge off the main coastal highway running north out of Mombasa.

Some bullet casings lay scattered around the car, suggesting that shots had been fired after the vehicle had stopped, while Esmail’s bloodied body lay slumped on the backseat with his companions.