Young Muslims set a church alight, burned tyres and clashed with police in Kenya’s main port city of Mombasa yesterday, leaving at least four dead after the killing of an Islamic cleric that his followers blamed on security forces.
The shooting of Sheikh Ibrahim Omar ignited religious tensions in the commercial and tourism hub, two weeks after Islamist militants killed at least 67 people in a raid on a Nairobi shopping mall.
The imam and three other men were found dead in a car on Mombasa’s outskirts on Thursday night, police said. TV images showed the vehicle sprayed with bullet holes.
Police dismissed allegations by Omar’s associates and people from his mosque that the shooting was part of a crackdown on Muslims after the mall attack or any wider campaign.
Riot police fired gunshots and teargas to break up the rioters who had set alight a Salvation Army church and blocked a main road, a Reuters witness said. The Kenyan Red Cross said four people had died, all with gunshot wounds.
The worst of the running battles with police took place in Mombasa’s downtrodden Saba Saba neighbourhood, where traders shuttered their shops and residents fled for safety. An uneasy calm fell over Mombasa three hours after the clashes began.
Omar was killed on the main road to the resort town of Malindi, a few hundred metres from where another firebrand cleric, Aboud Rogo, was shot dead in his vehicle in August 2012 in a strikingly similar attack.
Al-Amin Kimathi, head of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, said the police were exploiting public anger over Westgate as a cover to extend what he believed was a campaign of killings.
“It is a continuation of what has been happening,” said Kimathi.
Police spokeswoman Zipporah Mboroki said there was “no truth” to the accusations of a campaign.
Mombasa county police chief Robert Kitur dismissed accusations of police involvement In Omar’s killing.
“The police have nothing to do with the shooting. That’s not how we operate,” he told reporters.
The US and Kenya had accused Rogo of recruiting and fund-raising for Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants – the group that claimed responsibility for last month’s mall raid.
Moderate Muslim leaders in Kenya said Omar had studied under Rogo and was nicknamed ‘Rogo junior’ after he publicly espoused the same hardline ideology of his former mentor.
Both imams were popular among youths in Mombasa and along Kenya’s Indian Ocean coastline where many Muslims feel marginalised by the predominantly Christian government.
Rogo’s death last year unleashed deadly riots in Mombasa.