Police Patrol Kenyan Port after Muslim Cleric's Assassination
Armed police patrolled the streets of Kenya's port city Mombasa Wednesday after a prominent radical Muslim cleric assassinated overnight was buried as martyr.
But Kenya's second city -- a key transport hub for East Africa and a popular tourist destination -- was reported calm in the morning, with the slain cleric's mosque broadcasting appeals for restraint among his supporters.
The cleric Abubaker Shariff Ahmed, was a vocal supporter of Osama bin Laden, and was on U.N. sanctions lists accused of being a "leading facilitator and recruiter of young Kenyan Muslims for violent militant activity in Somalia", and of having "strong ties" with Shebab leaders.
Better known as Makaburi or "grave" in Swahili, he had described last year's attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, which was claimed by Somalia's Al-Qaida-linked Shebab rebels, as "100-percent justified".
An AFP reporter in the city said Muslim clerics' appeals for calm rang out from loudspeakers at Makaburi's mosque throughout the night. Similar calls were also made on local radio stations.
Senior police officer in Mombasa Richard Ngatia confirmed Makaburi had been killed by "unknown assailants".
Previous killings of clerics have sparked deadly riots, with supporters clashing with the police.
There were initial angry scenes outside the police station where the body had been taken, and police fired into the air to push back furious supporters of the cleric.
But while there was a tense atmosphere and police and security forces had deployed in large numbers -- including putting extra armed guards around key churches in flashpoint areas -- Mombasa was calm.
"We condemn this extra-judicial killing, and we are far from happy at the security situation here... these killings have to stop," said Sheikh Muhdhar Khitamy, regional chairman of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims.
"However, we call for calm and for people not to react with violence," he added.
Britain's foreign office said the killings had "led to unrest and increased tension in the area", warning in a travel notice of the "possibility of further disturbances in the Mombasa area".
Makaburi, dressed in white robes, was shot in the chest. Another young man was also shot dead alongside him.
Makaburi was buried shortly after midnight and hailed as a "martyr".
A prominent leader at the controversial Musa Mosque, a scene of frequent unrest in Mombasa, Makaburi presented himself as a simple man promoting "true Islam", and said the best examples of Islam were to be found in parts of Fallujah in Iraq, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and Shebab-held areas of Somalia.
Somalia's Shebab have made repeated threats against Kenya, whose troops are in Somalia battling the Islamists as part of an African Union force.
The killing of Makaburi comes just over a week after six worshipers were shot dead in a church near Mombasa, prompting a fresh crackdown by Kenyan security forces and renewed talk among officials of a "shoot-to-kill" policy to deal with the threat of Islamist violence.
It also came the day after another six people were killed in bomb attacks in the densely populated Nairobi district of Eastleigh, with police making sweeping arrests of over 650 people.
Police in Nairobi safely defused another roadside bomb near the Eastleigh district on Wednesday.
Amid fears of worsening security and attacks by Somali insurgents, Kenyan authorities last month ordered all refugees -- most of them Somalis -- to report to two overcrowded camps, a move criticized by rights groups and the United Nations.
Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku on Wednesday repeated orders for refugees to "comply with the directive" and move to the camps.
Source: Agence France Presse
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